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Thread: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.

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Number of posts in this thread: 9 (In chronological order)

From: Catherine Brys
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 9:20AM
Subject: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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Hello,

On many sites, you see characters such as

From: ben morrison
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 10:10AM
Subject: Re: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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On 4/3/06, Catherine Brys < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On many sites, you see characters such as

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 10:20AM
Subject: Re: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Catherine Brys wrote:

> On many sites, you see characters such as

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 10:30AM
Subject: RE: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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> Although this is convenient for the web editor, this must be
> confusing for screenreader users. What is your experience as
> a user or your opinion as a designer?

As a graphic designer, they're great.

As someone who wants to use proper markup, using Greater Than and Quotes
as bullet points isn't terribly semantic.

When I need an arrow to bullet a link, I make it a background image and
attach it to the LI itself. For dividers, I typically use an image '|'
as well and set the list inline.

For breadcrumbs, though, I find the Greaterthan sign acceptable, though
I can't vouch for it's friendliness in a screen reader. I find it
acceptable because it remains somewhat semantic:

Home > Fruit > Citrus

Home (is greater than) section page (is greater than) sub page

-Darrel




From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 10:40AM
Subject: Re: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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> There is a good artcile explaining how these will be read out in
> screenreaders - could you image 'right double angle bracket' every
> time you come across it.
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/?2004/11/06/6-the-sound-of-the-accessible-title-tag-separator
>

My favourite are people using text for their visual appearance,
especially in the page title. A
" ::: what we are" is read as colon colon colon what we are and in
this case really spot-on.




From: L
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 11:10AM
Subject: RE: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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Catherine Brys wrote:

"On many sites, you see characters such as

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 11:20AM
Subject: Re: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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Historical perspective:

On 4/3/06, Catherine Brys < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> On many sites, you see characters such as

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 11:40AM
Subject: Re: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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> .noshow { display: none; }
> <span class="noshow">[</span> ... <span class="noshow">|</span> ...
> <span class="noshow">]</span>

I think the difference is also that with web semantics in mind and
wonderful styling examples like listamatic[1] more and more developers
started using lists for navigation menus rather than just links
following each other, which makes the whole debate less of a problem.
With a more beaurocratic mind this can lead to rather fascinating
results. I found this construct on a German site the other day:

<ul>
<li><a href="/themen/">Themen</a><span>.</span></li>
<li><a href="/termine/">Termine</a><span>.</span></li>
</ul>

This mixes both approaches, as the span was hidden via CSS. IMHO
superfluous, or are there cases were modern user agents won't be able
to distinguish between list items?

[1] http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/

--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/




From: priti
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2006 11:00PM
Subject: Re: Use of characters as separators/arrows, etc.
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Hi All,

It depends on the user, how do they access the links on a webpage.

If JAWS user access the links through the "Links List Dialog Box", then they
won't have to listen all the characters--'|' even if there punctuation
reading is set to'All'.

On the other hand, the user is reading the entire page, then they would have
to listen all the stuff.

Regards,
Priti Rohra
Accessibility Tester
Net Systems Informatics (I) Pvt. Ltd.
India
Tel: 91-22-26860485/6 extn: 28
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Url: www.n-syst.com


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From: "L