Re: title attribute and wcag 2.0

> On Mar 2, 2010, at 3:03 AM, aurélien levy wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Yes I agree with that but the problem is that up front most of the people
> think that they can use title because they didn't read the techniques in
> detail and just see "Hxx. Use the title attribut...".
> For example :
>
> Providing a supplemental description of the purpose of a link using one of
> the following techniques:
>  * H33: Supplementing link text with the title attribute (HTML)
>
> people stop here an say yes great I can use title. But  in real world they
> can't because as I say in my last mail none of the browser out there give
> access to the title attribut for a keyboard user.
>
> Others solutions than changing this statement as a note can be :
> - to change the title of the different techniques to include the keyboard
> navigation like :
> "H33: Supplementing link text with the title attribute (HTML) and make the
> information available to every keyboard user in someway"
> - to remove these techniques (or make additional techniques) as long as most
> common browser don't support keyboard for title attribut
>
> Aurélien
> PS: in my mind it's not an AT issue but a browser issue regarding UAAG
>
> hi Aurélien
>  Sometime we have what we call  AT push techniques.   The AT doesn't do them
> yet but they could/should.     When that happens we warn authors with text
> like that.
> Gregg
> -----------------------
> Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D.
> Director Trace R&D Center
> Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering
> and Biomedical Engineering
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
>
> On Mar 1, 2010, at 9:38 AM, aurélien levy wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> me again with another question :
>
> The title attribute is explicitly given as an sufficient technique for a lot
> of guidelines : H65,H64,H33, H89, H86
>
> but in the H86 technique it's explicitly said :
> "Implementing this technique with the title attribute is only sufficient if
> the title attribute is accessibility supported. The content of the title
> attribute needs to be available to all keyboard users (not only those with
> text-to-speech software) for this attribute to be accessibility supported."
>
> This statement is true but it's true for every other cases too.
> In consequence this must be stated in every other techniques (and it's not
> the case right now). The problem is that this will make these techniques
> unusable as there is no implementation of accessibility supported title
> (available to all keyboard users) out there.
>
> Otherwise you have to rewrite this statement as just the same note in every
> technique like :
> Note: Current user agents and assistive technologies do not always provide
> the information contained in the title attribute to users, specially for
> keyboard navigation users. It's recommended to use another sufficient
> technique when possible.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Aurélien Levy
> ----
> Temesis
>
>
================================
Response from the Working Group
================================
All of our techniques are subject to the accessibility-supported
conformance requirement. We have tried to indicate potential support
issues where we are currently aware of them to aid authors.

For most of the techniques identified the title attribute is used to
supplement visual cues and associations already present in the
content. For example, a sighted user does not need to access the title
attribute value on each of the three edit boxes for a phone number
since the visual display of three edit boxes indicates the expected
breakup of the phone number entered. Another example, a sighted user
does not need to access the title attribute value on a link with text
"PDF" because the document title is visually provided near the link.
Implementations that do not have any visual cue would be considered
poor for their general usability and thus affect all users (except
screen reader users if the title value has been provided).

ACSII art, emoticons and leetspeek, however, do not tend to have other
visual cues for understanding their meaning. This means the
information provided by the title attribute value needs to be
available visually to accommodate sighted user groups in addition to
non-sighted user groups. Support for both of these requirements is
currently lacking (screen readers do not currently support title
values on elements other than links, images and form controls; and
browsers do not show the title attribute on keyboard focus and may not
be able to give the art, emoticon, leetspeek keyboard focus at all.)
Thus technique H86 requires a much stronger message regarding support.

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact


On behalf of the WCAG Working Group

Received on Friday, 21 May 2010 21:57:08 UTC