RE: Should 2.4.4 require Link text or ACCNAME, rather than enclosing sentence etc...

From: Jonathan Avila [mailto:jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com]
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2016 11:40 AM

This has always been an unclear issue with SC 2.4.4.  That is on first read it sounds like it is about programmatic association which would primarily assist users who are blind.

But the non-normative understanding document (https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20130905/navigation-mechanisms-refs.html)  Goes on to main these benefits:
·        This Success Criterion helps people with motion impairment by letting them skip links that they are not interested in, avoiding the keystrokes needed to visit the referenced content and then returning to the current content.
·        People with cognitive limitations will not become disoriented by multiple means of navigation to and from content they are not interested in.

For benefit 1 above – how does a programmatic association help users with motor disabilities any more than the visual context of the link?  For benefit 2 above – seems like the benefit to users with cognitive disabilities here are only with assistive technology are used unless a technique like a title attribute or hover was used.
[Jason] Upon close reading, though, the success criterion is not about programmatic association. “Can be determined” does not mean “programmatically determined”. The first occurrence of “determined” in the success criterion means determined by the user, whereas the second occurrence is explicitly a matter of programmatic determination.
There are two ways of meeting this success criterion.

1.      Ensure that the purpose of the link is clear (i.e., can be determined by the user) from the text alone, or

2.      Ensure that the purpose can be determined from the link’s context, where this context can be programmatically determined.
A context which can be programmatically determined will usually be visually obvious as well, but this is not guaranteed.
However, if the first method of satisfying the success criterion, namely by making the purpose apparent from the link text alone, is followed, then the benefits mentioned in the Understanding document to various user populations who do not have assistive technologies should occur.
I think the alleged ambiguity is attributable to the use of “determined” in both its ordinary sense and in a restricted, technical sense (i.e., “programmatically determined”) in the same sentence. Careful reading shows the meaning to be clear, but it surely qualifies as a semantic trap for the unwary. I think it should be flagged for possible revision in a future version.


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