Re: The title attribute is 99% bad

New version with two corrections:

1) "Link element" changed to "links",
2) "keyboard users" changed to "ordinary keyboard users" (title
attribute normally works for screen readers).

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In WCAG-1 and in the proposal for WCAG-2 it is recommended to use the
title attribute as a tool tip for additional information in links,
www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20040730/#links, etc., and title
is also used in the abbr and acronym elements also rendered as a tool
tip in many browsers.

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The guidelines/techniques should add something like this:

Until user agents like browsers render the title attribute in a way

1) that can also be used by ordinary keyboard users,
2) and also is rendered automatically when the document is printed,
3) and in such a way that the tool tip is not turned off after a few
seconds (IE does that),
4) and in such a way that the text in the tool tip resizes a long with
the rest of the text of the web page,

web content authors must not rely on the title attribute for supplying
additional information in links or in any other tag where the title
attribute is rendered as a tool tip, since it puts a lot of users with
disabilities at an even greater disadvantage.


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Best regards,

Jesper Tverskov
www.smackthemouse.com

Received on Wednesday, 1 September 2004 12:07:07 UTC