Re: Link Text and Metadata

Hello Matthew,
My suggestion is  that you should use the title attribute to  give the extended description. It will be useful to word the title attribute  taking into account what is in the linked text so as to avoid repetition and clutter as much as possible. JAWS and Window-Eyes can be  made to expose the title attribute for now and  I suppose other screen readers might too. Include a statement in your accessibility statement (if the site has one- I strongly recommend one) that tells users that  they should check the linked text for title if they feel the linked text is unclear / very general. 
I did not understand why  you need to use h1 tag for the title attribute.
Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer 
Deque Systems,11180  Sunrise Valley Drive, 
4th Floor, Reston VA 20191
Tel: 703-225-0380 Extension 105 
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com
Fax: 703-225-0387
* Look up <http://www.deque.com> *
---- Original Message ----- 
  From: Matthew Smith 
  To: WAI Interest Group 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 9:21 PM
  Subject: Link Text and Metadata



  Hi All

  I have various programmes that generate (X)HTML content from a database.  I use 
  certain fields from the database to create a menu for the collection of pages. 
  Everytime I embark on a new project, I revise these programmes in light of 
  experience, new techinques developed, etc.  I am in the throes of doing this at 
  present and present the following for your consideration:

  At present, a link body is populated from a field specifically for that purpose 
  - something as short and simple as possible.  In the title property of the link, 
  I put in the title (as would appear in <h1></h1>) of the target page.

  As I also have a set of (Dublin Core) metadata fields in my table, would it be 
  more appropriate to use a more extended description of the target page (from my 
  DC.Description field) in place of the target page title?

  To give an example:
  Link text = "Contact";
  Target page title = "Contact Us";
  DC.Description = "Contact information for the xyz corporation";

  My thinking is that using the extended description will allow the link to make 
  sense, even if taken totally out of context.  Would this, however, create 
  confusing clutter?

  Cheers

  M

  -- 
  Matthew Smith
  Kadina Business Consultancy
  South Australia

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