Re: About "programmatically determined link context"

Hi, David and all,

Unfortunately, this is one of those few cases where the issue is not 
only in a technique, but in the WCAG Recommendation itself, since it is 
used as an example in the normative Glossary:

"programmatically determined link context

(...)

Example: In HTML, information that is programmatically determinable from 
a link in English includes text that is in the same paragraph, list, or 
table cell as the link or in a table header cell that is associated with 
the table cell that contains the link.

Note: Since screen readers interpret punctuation, they can also provide 
the context from the current sentence, when the focus is on a link in 
that sentence."

Thus, my view is that we can concentrate not only on depracating 
implicit tecniques, but also on describing their lack of accessibility 
support.

That said, I agree that there should be a compromise between the 
descriptiveness of the links and their verbosity, which can be annoying 
when reading them in context (Wikipedia is a good example).

Kind regards,
Ramón.

David wrote:

> I totally support your position. While it is true that JAWS has commands 
> that read context while sitting on a link.  (see links below **) it is 
> also true that in 12 years of working with blind Screen Reader users 
> I've never seen anyone know how to do this or actually use it in the 
> real world. At the time, around 2005 when this issue came up, those of 
> us on the committee who were advocating for the concern of screen reader 
> users were looking for a compromise with those who wanted to ensure that 
> authors of hotel sites etc, had flexibility with authoring. John Slatin, 
> who was an expert screen reader user came up with this compromise. But 
> is important to note that he was quick to say that even as an expert 
> JAWS user, he had never used any of these keystrokes or even knew about 
> them before investigating this issue with the group. And in the nearly 
> 10 years since then, it is still an unknown, and not well supported in 
> most screen readers.
> 
> I think in light of aria-describedby, aria-label, and aria-labelledby we 
> should be considering moving implicit  programmatic association 
> techniques, such as "enclosing sentence", and "enclosing paragraph" from 
>  sufficient to advisory.
> 
> **
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/Techniques/ua-notes/html#H78
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/Techniques/ua-notes/html#H80

Received on Wednesday, 7 May 2014 15:48:08 UTC