RE: Links from Yvette

I think using the title attribute of the UL for a description of the group
of links is a great idea. 

At the moment some designers including me use the UL technique for grouping
links with a heading before it to give the list a 'title':

<h2 class="navigation">Main navigation</h2>
<ul>
<li>Subject 1</li>
<li>Subject 2</li>
</ul>

I make the heading invisible using display:none in CSS. As pointed out
yesterday during the tech meeting, this is not a preferred way of doing
things since assistive technology may honor display:none in future versions
which would then once again make the description unavailable. Also, I'm
actually creating a fake title for the list which could be achieved more
elegantly by using the title attribute for the list.

Another advantage of using the title-attribute of UL is that it can be used
to describe the hierarchy of links in the navigation by giving subsequent
UL's their own titles if necessary. I think Roberto's addition makes using
unordered lists a very useful way to group links.

Yvette Hoitink

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Roberto Scano 
> - IWA/HWG
> Sent: woensdag 6 augustus 2003 21:54
> To: Y.P. Hoitink; 'WCAG List'
> Subject: Re: Links from Yvette
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Y.P. Hoitink" <y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl>
> To: "'Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG'" <rscano@iwa-italy.org>; 
> "'WCAG List'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 9:44 PM
> Subject: RE: Links from Yvette
> 
> Another example of using <UL> to group links is this link: 
http://ua.dnr.state.wi.us that was also posted during the discussion (sorry,
don't remember who brought this one up). This example includes the box-hover
effect that many designers like.


Roberto Scano:
I think that the use of <li> could be good for accessibility, due that with
the correct use of CSS the <li> can be modified and adapted to the website
layout.

Why also, for more accessibility, not use the "title" attribute for the UL
[1]?

[snip example] 

the assistive tecnology could read the title and (i think this is not
implemented but could be done) skip all the <li> if the title of <ul> is not
of interest of the user.

What the group think about this?


Roberto Scano
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html#h-10.2

Received on Thursday, 7 August 2003 12:48:58 UTC