Talk:Coatesville station

Formatting needs to be reviewed and improved
As photos, illustrations, and infobox-related graphics have been added to this article over the last several years, it has acquired an increasingly cluttered look that makes it very difficult to read for people with visual impairments. The addition of a smaller postcard illustration appears to violate Wikipedia's Manual of Style/Accessibility standards, which urge editors to "Avoid placing images on the left hand side as a consistent left hand margin makes reading easier" and "Avoid sandwiching text between two images or, unless absolutely necessary, using fixed image sizes." At this point, more text needs to be added to the article and/or the postcard image needs to be removed or repositioned to the right in order to bring the article back into compliance with the MOS and make it more accessible for Wikipedia users with visual impairments. Note: I recently attempted to fix this image issue, but was reverted in good faith by another Wikipedian. So, I'm bringing this issue to the Talk page for consideration, and have also tagged the article with the "sandwiched text" tag. 47thPennVols (talk) 20:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree that the text doesn't support a second image, and I wouldn't put it on the right. Having it floating around in the references (or wherever) makes no sense for sighted users. One broader solution might be supporting multiple images on, such as one for historic views and perhaps another for interiors. Mackensen (talk) 22:48, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, both of those accessibility standards should be retired, as they don't seem to be based on current best practices. In this case, they make the article worse, and I think they should be ignored.
 * The text about sandwiching is a holdover from years past, when browsers didn't do a good job at handling text with different widths. Modern browsers do a much better job of this (plus modern screens are much larger than a decade or two ago), and mobile browsers place images before section text. Given that the average article is 644 words (about the same length as many infoboxes if there's not a TOC), prohibiting images opposite an infobox would prevent any inline images in a substantial number of articles. Right-aligning the image places it with the references, outside the section it illustrates.
 * The left hand prohibition seems to be a misunderstanding of the actual issue. Web accessibility guides (Harvard and Princeton, for example) talk about the importance of left-justified text because center- and right-justified text produces a ragged left margin, and center-justified text produces inconsistent spacing. There's nothing in these guides that suggest left-hand images are bad, so long as the text is still left-justified.
 * For the time being, I've placed the postcard image and a second relevant historical image in a gallery, which means there's no text next to the images to cause issues. I'll try to expand the article when I get a chance. Note that I've also added alt text to all images, which is a universally agreed-upon accessibility measure. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)