RE: Creative (?) solution for redundant links

well, I think it is a bad idea. I think the best approach is to work out how
to have the two things in the same link. (Of course if you have CSS2 you can
have

a img:after { content: attr(alt) }

as a user stylesheet rule for

<a href="blah">
<img src="foo" alt="something helpful" />
</a>

and get both. If you had a fullly UAAG-conformant browser you could have

<a href="blah">
<object data="someimage" type="image/svg+xml">something
helpful</object>
</a>

and ask it to render both (or either, or ...)

chaals

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Mike Scott wrote:

  Charles,

  What if we used CSS cursor: pointer (or "hand" according to IE) to turn
  the pointer into a "hand" when the mouse hovered over the image?

  Also, the text link would provide exactly the same functionality as the
  image pseudo-link, so it's not practically necessary for the user to
  find out that the image is a link if they don't automatically assume
  that it is -- the hope would be to find a way to accommodate those
  visual users who would instinctually assume that the image was also part
  of the link...

  (I'm just hoping to talk this all the way through -- I am definitely
  still open to being convinced that it's a bad idea...)

  Thanks,
  Mike

  -----Original Message-----
  From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On
  Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
  Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 11:10 AM
  To: Mike Scott
  Cc: 'WAI (E-mail)'
  Subject: Re: Creative (?) solution for redundant links

  Problem is that  users need a way of finding out what things can be
  triggered by an onClick - this is a specific requirement of user agent
  accessibility
  guidelines:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/guidelines.html#tech-nav-just-active
  - so the solution doesn't really solve the problem, and instead leaves
  the user, in a good implementation, in the situation of finding out
  there is something that uses a non-standard link method that is not
  written to be accessiblt and for which there is no helpful information
  available.

  cheers

  Chaals

  On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Mike Scott wrote:

    We've talked a few times about the problems of the common "image
    followed by text" link situation -- in particular, that we may want to
    allow sighted users to click on either the image or text, but we'd
    rather avoid making screen reader users hear the same link text
  repeated
    twice (the image's alt text followed by the text link).

    What if we did something like this (HTML code follows):

    <img src="image.gif" alt=""
  onclick="document.location='newpage.html';">
    <a href="newpage.html">Link Text</a>

    (i.e., use a javascript "onclick" on the image to load the new page if
    the image is clicked.)

    The image alt wouldn't show up in a screen reader's links list, and
  with
    alt = null, it wouldn't be read; at the same time, if a sighted user
    (whose browser supported javascript) clicked on the image, it would
  act
    as if it were a link. Without javascript, clicking the image would
    simply do nothing, but the text link would still work.

    Of course, this scenario would only apply if the image and the text
  link
    were exactly redundant, and when the layout of the page was preventing
    us from simply putting a single link element around both.

    Thoughts???

    Mike






-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI  fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Monday, 11 March 2002 13:10:30 UTC