RE: Programmatic association of generic link text

Hi Vivienne,

> http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/F63
> 
> This failure deals with the context needed to understand the purpose of a
link.  It
> states that the text in question needs to be in the same 'sentence,
paragraph, list
> item, or table cell as the link".  I'm seeing a lot of people putting it
in a <div>
> element rather than the above items.  Would you consider that to be a
failure?

The short answer is "yes" and the long answer is "it depends".

The failure is clear and DIV is not one of the allowed parameters. In
practical terms there are situations where DIV works fine, being tested with
JAWS or NVDA. Other/older screenreaders could do something different with
blocks of text in a DIV separated by BR.

There are other situations where several blocks of text are presented
visually only by CSS, i.e. <div><span>first block</span><span>second
block</span></div>. That often does not work with screenreaders, which may
treat the entire content as one paragraph. Thus, it can get difficult for
screenreaders to discover the context of a link. 

So, in doubt, DIV ist not OK.

In most situations like the above links are part of a sentence, so there are
other means for screenreader users to discover the context, and using DIV
does not invoke a failure.

Regards,
Jan


--
Jan Eric Hellbusch 
Tel.: +49 (231) 86436760 oder +49 (163) 3369925
Web: http://2bweb.de     Twitter: www.twitter.com/2bweb
-- 
Das Buch über barrierefreies Webdesign:
"Barrierefreiheit verstehen und umsetzen - Webstandards für ein zugängliches
und nutzbares Internet"
812 Seiten, Dpunkt Verlag (2011)
http://www.barrierefreies-webdesign.de/dpunkt/

Received on Tuesday, 4 September 2012 09:51:14 UTC