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Re: Using CSS to hide a portion of the link text

for

From: deblist@suberic.net
Date: Aug 4, 2009 10:10AM

On Tue, 4 Aug 2009, Chris Hoffman wrote:

>
> Why do we (and WCAG) go out of our way to let users avoid context when
> reading our pages? Is it because screen reader users can navigate by
> running through a list of links? Well I (a sighted user) can do the
> same thing by scanning the page, but I still need to go back and check
> the context of a link before I click on it.

Able-bodied users absolutely benefit from more context-complete
link text. Anybody who's doing keyboard navigation (which I admit
only includes me because I have a disability, but includes plenty
of other people who just dislike mice) will benefit by being able
to do keyboard search ahead to the exact text of a link.
Moreover, anybody who has a reason to use the "display all links
on a page" functionality in most browsers will also benefit by
more context-completely text.

I think of it as a general universal design argument. If you are
putting in a lot of extra features to make context clear to your
disabled users, it's worth taking a moment to think about whether
or not your disabled users are the only people who need it.
Better link text helps everybody (except for lazy graphic
designers).

-Deborah