Seeking *opinions* as part of a larger research issue.

The use-cases are pretty simple:
1) an ePub book has text content on the page that is a URL (i.e. it quite
literally reads "www.examplesite.com"). The URL does not (and is not
expected to) actually resolve anywhere, it's just an example or placeholder
text.
2) an ePub book has content on the page that was once an active hyperlink,
but the link no longer exists.

The question is: for both of those use-cases (where the "print" is offering
up a text string formatted as an URL, but there is no actual URL to resolve
to), should those text strings STILL be marked up as hyperlinks?

From a strict conformance to WCAG perspective… well, WCAG is silent on this
specific topic (and so it seems is ePub Accessibility 1.1).
I strongly suspect that there are arguments for both sides of the
discussion (“should all printed URL’s be active links”?), but I am
currently backing the perspective that having users (readers) follow
inactive links (or presenting users with inactive links to follow),
a) potentially places negative cognitive strain and confusion on some users,
b) potentially demands unnecessary interactions (clicking a useless link)
that could be problematic for mobility impaired users, and
c) delivers zero quality for any effort invested by the user.

My questions are:
1) do you agree or disagree with my reasoning? (If you disagree, might I
ask for your counter-argument please?)

2) have you encountered this before? If you have, can you tell me what you
ended up doing? In particular, if you work in EDU (office of accommodation,
etc.) where ePub remediation is part of your work/tasks, do you have a
'standard' policy or solution to either of these use cases?

3) any other thoughts or comments? (Note: we're looking for a solution that
is also scalable, FWIW)

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

JF
-- 
*John Foliot* |
Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility |
W3C Accessibility Standards Contributor |

"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." -
Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"