Re: technique to overcome meaningful link text

I find this works well.
 
<style type="text/css">
a b.hidden {
height: 1px;
width: 1px;
position: absolute;
overflow: hidden;
top: -10px;
}
</style>
<a href="#">Edit <b class="hidden">Hidden Information</b></a>

 
 Donald F. Evans 
Accessibility Architect
American Online
donaldfevans@aol.com
(703) 265-5952
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Loretta Guarino Reid <lguarino@adobe.com>
To: David MacDonald <befree@magma.ca>; WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 07:43:04 -0800
Subject: Re: technique to overcome meaningful link text


As a technique, I don't really like this much. Images of text can't satisfy lots of UA requirements for text, like the ability to resize the text or control the font used.

Fundamentally, though, I get the sense that the group is converging on requiring meaningful link text, directly associated with the link, not in its  surrounding context. We would opt for having a verbose reading of the links as the page is being read (which is what would happen with this technique).

In that case, shouldn't we recommend using the title of the link to specify the complete text? (In PDF, we can provide Alt text for the link, but we need an HTML technique, too). AT would need to provide an option to use the title text in lists of links, to make this most effective.

Loretta


On 1/12/06 4:06 PM, "David MacDonald" <befree@magma.ca> wrote:



I think this technique (below) could also be used for single word links like "more" and "click here" in those instances when one word links might be appropriate. 
 
If this is ok with the group I think we could overcome the "justified" exceptions for meaningful links.
 
This is a proposed technique for how to create meaningful link text for SC 2.4.5. when there is an array of links to multiple versions of the same content. I hope this overcomes the exception for arrays of links. 
 
1)       Create images of text that say "HTML", "PDF", "XML" etc.
2)       Create links from the images of text to the corresponding documents.
3)       Create "alt text" using meaningful descriptions of the corresponding destinations for each of the images.
I think the technique could also be written in a non-technology specific format.
Regards
David MacDonald
.Access empowers people
           .barriers disable them.
www.eramp.com <http://www.eramp.com>