RE: Techniques revision - Meaningful link names

I disagree that the links list features of JAWS and Home Page Reader "re-mix" the page in some inappropriate way, as Joe's message implies.  Most pages employ some visual markers that make links easier to spot, and thus easier to zoom-and-point-to.  The links list is my nearest approximation to sighted users' ability to scan the page at a glance, locate the link they're interested in, and click it.  

Sometimes I use the tab key instead, whichh jumps me from link to link but also takes me through any intervening form controls (and anything else that has a tabindex attribute).  Sighted people who prefer or require the keyboard do the same thing.  And I know a lot of sighted people who've said they'd love to have something like a links list for IE or Netscape.

A neatly structured list of unintelligible links is no more useful than a completely unstructured list of unintelligible links.

Meaningful link text (whether it's on the screen or in a title attribute) gives the user good information about what lies at the other end of the link; Jared Spool has written that this increases users' confidence in what they're doing and reduces the number of errors.  I don't have the reference handy, but I think you can find it at the User Interface Engineering Web site.

John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Technology & Learning
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.ital.utexas.edu
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Clark [mailto:joeclark@joeclark.org] 
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 4:01 pm
To: WAI-GL
Subject: Re: Techniques revision - Meaningful link names



Kynn is correct and is rearticulating a point I had made on the list previously.

<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003AprJun/0289.html>

David is incorrect, and bases his entire argument on the peccadillos of a preferred adaptive technology. It's none of WAI's business which features an adaptive technology (that always means Jaws for Windows) may introduce to spontaneously remix Web sites without authorial consent. You can't have it both ways: A page that works well in correct structure and one that works when the pieces are tossed into a hat and pulled out randomly.

> I don't think blind users are saying the page should be usable without 
> structure.  They are simply saying that they find being able to scan 
> lists of links helpful.

Here is a list of links, schematically:

<ul>
<li><a></a></li>
<li><a></a></li>
<li><a></a></li>
<li><a></a></li>
</ul>

That's a reasonable HTML structure. Extracted link text isn't a structure.


> They are grateful that structure is being introduced into many sites 
> and find it to be a great leap forward in accessibility but they 
> consider that as something distinct.

Structural HTML is important. Specific page-remixing features of screen readers are not.

> As a sighted person I can scan a document, and quickly figure out the 
> context of each link.  A blind person finds the context when they hit 
> the Headings dialogue box but they currently don't see the links that 
> are under those headings in the same dialogue box.

That will happen in serial vs. random presentation. The proposed solution does not solve that ineradicable problem and raises problems of its own.

> So they do not have the same
> contextual advantage as me.  What helps them compensate is being able 
> to bring up a separate box of links that says more than "buy it", 
> "more info", "Click here" etc.

That feature could and should be reprogrammed to feature the entire sentence, ±5 words on either side, the title attribute, and a range of other information. Or the user could just read the sentence *exactly as a sighted person does*.

> The other point that screen reader user Harry Monk brought forward was 
> that although we are seeing the beginnings of the introduction of 
> Headers into web sites, the vast majority still don't use them.

Further evidence that structural HTML is the priority, not accommodation of individual product features. WCAG 2 needs to entirely eliminate the bastard child of Web accessibility, "until user agents," and its cousin, "since our preferred user agent has neato feature that permits."

> In WCAG 1.0 Web Masters were required to structure the document 
> properly. (Section 3.5 - although it was not as well articulated as it 
> will be in WCAG
> 2.0) AND have meaningful links (13.1) I don't see how we are being over
> demanding by saying they should still make links meaningful.

Links should be meaningful in and of themselves and in context, but not if spontaneously remixed in unforeseeable ways.

Why *are* people still claiming this is in any way worthy of WCAG 2?


> -----Original Message-----

*Cough*.

-- 
Joe Clark
<http://joeclark.org/access>

Received on Thursday, 14 August 2003 15:55:23 UTC