How to Meet Success Criterion 2.4.5

Hi,

I was just going through your document WCAG 2.0 and came across the
following link:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20051123/Overview.html#navigation-mechanisms-refs
..

Concerning your editorial note:

"*Editorial Note*: The working group is not sure how close the "association"
between the text and the destination should be. On one hand, if you have a
page with a list of book titles with links saying WORD, PDF, HTML, and TEXT
following each title, it seems logical that having the title next to the row
of links would be better than repeating the title in each of the links. It
would be better for people who look at the page and better for someone
reading down the page with a screen reader looking for a book title and then
selecting the type. On the other hand, allowing "text next to a link" to
suffice for 'associated' would allow one to say "for more information" next
to a link labeled "click here". This can lead to a page of 'click here'
links and that is not seen as desirable.

   1.

   Is there a rule or wording for the success criterion that allows one
   but not the other?
   2.

   How big is the problem?
   3.

   Would requiring that all links contain full information about their
   destination (without reading any surrounding text) be overly restrictive or
   not?
   4.

   Should links be required to make sense when read out of context? (Or
   is this requiring that pieces of content need to make sense when removed
   from the rest of the content?)
   5.

   *Note: *Jumping between links or listing the links on a page is a
   common navigation technique.

Comments invited."

In my experience I agree with point 4 and would say that it would be better
to have the full title and type of download (i.e. WORD, PDF ... etc) as the
text in the links. There are two reasons for this: I was acquainting myself
with JAWS last week and noticed that there is a function that allows users
to list all the links and then based on the name of the link the users could
avigate directly to it. I also saw a video of a blind user using JAWS who
mentioned that links that don't make sense out of context are not
accessible. Please see the accessibility videos here:
http://www.edtec.unsw.edu.au/inter/support/accessibility/access_frame.cfm

Another area of interest for me is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). For SEO
purposes it would also be better to have the full title in the link rather
than just the words: PDF, HTML etc...

I am wondering, could the title attribute be used in conjunction with the
anchor tag to help further explain the destination of a link. Though i am
not sure how title attributes are harnessed in Screen Readers, or how they
are viewed by Search Engines.

On a different note I have an issue with Access Keys and their
implementation. The problem is that at the moment they over-ride access key
functionality of the browser software used by the user. Is it not possible
for there to to be two types of Access Keys? One to control the web page (
e.g. ALT + KEY) and the other to control the browser software and specify a
different key other than the ALT (e.g. SHIFT + KEY)? Until this conflict is
resolved it seems to me too dangerous to use Access Keys in the web page.

Kind Regards,

Ali Zaidi, Final Year BSc (Hons) Web Development Student, University Of
Teesside, UK