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Re: Popup windows and JAWS

for

From: Léonie Watson
Date: Oct 28, 2009 3:40AM


If the alert for a pop-up window is placed inside the link text, please include it after the important link words."

This is good advice. Looking at the wider picture though, it represents one of the quandaries for web accessibility at the moment. Warning people about new windows is undoubtedly helpful for some. For a screen reader user, the act of reading a piece of text with several such inline links, can be a dreadful experience. For example:

"The first house build on the site of <Buckingham Palace (Opens new window)> is believed to be <Goring House (Opens new window)>, built by <Sir William Blake (Opens new window)> in around 1624."

Just now, I don't know what the elegant solution might be. Some mechanism for turning on/off the notifications perhaps? That too opens up the possibility of making the interface too complex for some people though, so perhaps there is another solution?


Regards,
Léonie.

--
Nomensa - humanising technology

Léonie Watson | Director of Accessibility
t. +44 (0)117 929 7333
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jennifer Sutton
Sent: 27 October 2009 22:36
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Popup windows and JAWS

Hello:

If the alert for a pop-up window is placed inside the link text, please include it after the important link words.

Having to listen to:
Opens in a new window
for a lot of links, not to mention navigating a list of links that all start with O, is tedious at best and quite annoying after a while.

If the alert words come after the more important link words that identify the link's content, then at least we can navigate through the links quickly to avoid having to listen to "opens in a new window" a million times.

Of course, if you only have one such link on a page, this issue isn't of particular concern.

Thank you for considering this idea.

Jennifer

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