Doesn’t solve the _copy_ problem, but (in firefox {not ie7/safari} you can copy the text (from the title attribute) by right clicking on canvas and selecting “image properties”

Script is making elements vanish in konqueror :\

Does jaws not give you a simple way to disable javascript? the page reads perfect if i do that.

For example, CSS background-image replacement that positions text off-screen fails to produce visible text for users who need to use their own (perhaps high contrast) color settings. sIFR typically positions the hidden “real” text exposed to assistive technology in a different place from the Flash movie replacement, which could (at least in theory) easily cause problems for users of screen magnifiers or text-to-speech aids that show a narrow view of focused text or select the text as they read it.

However, at least both off-screen text and sIFR-replaced text would work for users who are blind and using at least some popular screen reader/browser combinations. The replaced text in the official sIFR3 Beta 2 example is read out by all of the following screen reader/browser combinations with roughly default settings: JAWS 10 Beta with IE7 or Firefox 3; GW Micro Window-Eyes 7 with IE7 or Firefox 3; and Apple VoiceOver with WebKit Nightly. (Although JAWS 10 Beta appears to announce a Flash button for each replacement when used with Firefox.)

But if you try to read the offical Typeface.js example with the same user agents, you’ll find that the replaced text is not read by any of them.

I disagree with Brad Neuberg that the result with Typeface.js is more accessible than using IMG, in which case the ALT text will be read by screen readers and text-to-speech aids, all popular browsers provide functionality to access the alternative text (whether as a tooltip, or a properties dialogue, or by the option to turn images off), and screen magnifiers and browsers with zoom functionality (IE7, Opera, Firefox 3) can zoom the image along with the rest of the page (albeit suffering pixilation). Users are more likely to be able to work around established standards like IMG than new hacks.

Not that I’d advise using IMG either; plain text with CSS-applied fonts is infinitely preferable.

By the by, ajaxery’s comment above (“If the plain HTML is intact for screen readers”) appears to reflect a common misconception that a typical screen reader interacts with raw HTML much as Lynx interacts with it. In fact, popular screen readers provide a speech and braille interface for desktop environments and applications, using a range of APIs specific to those environments and applications, rather than interacting with HTML directly. They are thus highly dependent on how browsers and plugins represent web content to them via those APIs. (I’ve bookmarked some resources that serve as an introduction to how screen readers really work on Delicious, for those interested.) So in the case of Typeface.js, screen reader accessibility depends on how the VML and canvas objects that replace the HTML objects are represented to assistive technology over those APIs and on the assistive technology being programmed to handle the available information.

I believe this is closer to being used on major websites then Yves lets on, especially because it increases search engine friendliness (SEO), which is a big deal to companies, as well as potentially increasing accessibility.

Whatever : great job, but not recommendable on important websites.

But not in Opera. I didn’t see any signifant slowness for any browser.
I tried it with H1 tag but it didn’t work.

I definetely prefer it to sIFR.

Also, is it really that slow to render? I haven’t really noticed.

Isn’t this what pure CSS would do? Why not just create a CSS declaration applying a specific font to the selector and go from there? If the user doesn’t have the font, they won’t see the style.

If you’re not embedding the font, then why even bother?

Then when they tried to select the rendered text, they would actually be selecting the hidden overlay text which would only show up when they try to select it.

If opacity:0.0 is set, then they can still select the text, but the text selection indicator doesn’t show up (at least in Firefox).

I’m just gonna wait for TTF support on the next versions of Firefox and Safari … and here we go a EOT file, a TTF … nothing more.

I especially like the simple support for different back-ends.

Serif will come back into style when Sony and Amazon’s eInk books get high enough resolution to make them worthwhile.