Re: Best Practices for using "title" attribute in links?

Link text itself should be clear enough on its own. And there's really 
no need to be so overly descriptive about where links go to (and 
certainly don't need the "Go to" prefix, as of course that's what links 
do, no need to explain it to users anyway).

Long story short: unnecessary titles are best avoided. They don't 
generally help, and can end up making the experience annoying and 
verbose for AT users.

P

On 09/01/2020 17:54, Rich Morin wrote:
> I've been prototyping a disability-related web site called "Pete's Alley" (http://pa.cfcl.com).  In an attempt to be helpful, I have been adding "title" attributes to my links.  The idea is that this would give the user a bit of warning about where the link might take them.  However, a blind friend says:
> 
>> When I use the tab key on these PA pages to select the next link, it announces the link as it should, but then it reads out the target -- often something like "Windows link Go to: Microsoft Windows [WP]" This is very unusual behavior, and undesirable, as it offers quite a bit of extraneous information that most users do not want or need. The desired behavior would be to simply announce the text associated with the URL, but not the URL or associated code.
> 
> I strongly suspect that he's right, but before I rework my link-generation code, I'd like to get a broader sampling of opinions (ducks).  What kinds of title attributes, if any, should I be generating?  In case it helps, I've appended a list of some title string templates below.  Finally, if you happen to notice any other accessibility issues on the site, please let me know (off-list).
> 
> -r
> 
> - "Go to: About [local]"
> - "Go to: Catalog [local]"
> - "Go to: Content [local]"
> - "Go to: home page [local]"
> - "Go to: Search [local]"
> - "Go to: Usage [local]"
> - "Go to: #{ inp_1 } [area]"
> - "Go to: #{ inp_1 } [item]"
> - "Go to: #{ inp_1 } [local]"
> - "Go to: #{ inp_1 } [source]"
> - "Go to: #{ name }"
> - "Go to: #{ site } [site]"
> - "Go to: #{ tmp_2 } [WP]"
> - "Go to: #{ site } [site]"
> - "Go to the Code Files page."
> - "Go to the Data Files page."
> - "Go to the Links Dashboard page."
> - "Go to the Refs page."
> - "Go to the site's Dashboard page."
> - "Go to the Tags page."
> - "Go to the #{ major_u } index page."
> - "Go to the #{ minor_u } index page."
> - "Go to the #{ section } index page."
> - "Go to the \"#{ first_char }\" page heading."
> - "Go to the \"#{ item_title }\" item page."
> - "Go to this item's Feedback page."
> - "Go to this item's Source page."
> 
> 


-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 9 January 2020 18:41:29 UTC