Re: Click here

good writing resolves the issue.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
To: "Al Gilman" <asgilman@iamdigex.net>; "Lynn Alford"
<lynn.alford@jcu.edu.au>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, August 09, 2002 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Click here



At 8:56 AM -0400 8/9/02, Al Gilman wrote:
>So if the link text is not standalone, the web fails in this
>link-skimming mode and is too tedious for words.  P2 grade failure
>is incurred -- useless for practical purposes.

This is a problem with the screenreader. It shouldn't be doing that.
The context of a hypertext link _is_ important.

If a screenreader is going to generate a summary, it should -- at the
very least -- include a good degree of context around the link, not
just the text of the link.  The notion that you can take any link out
of context and expect it to work well is a bad assumption regarding
hypertext.

I agree that most pages are tedious and not easy to navigate.  However,
expecting all links to make sense when read in a list is not a
reasonable
requirement to place on text authors and it does not solve the problem
correctly.

A different solution must be found to the tediousness of pages -- at
Edapta [*] our solution was to generate navigatable sections of each
page with a menu up front and appropriate backlinks, plus page
summaries.

--Kynn

[*] Now long-dead, and bought by Reef, which is now dead too.

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain            http://idyllmtn.com
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24       http://cssin24hours.com
Kynn on Web Accessibility ->>          http://kynn.com/+sitepoint

Received on Saturday, 10 August 2002 13:17:20 UTC