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Re: Links in tables and title attributes

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 5, 2010 8:30AM

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 3:37 AM, James Kennard wrote:
> Therefore I think that the titles for the
> links should include the indentifier, for example: "Remove 123", "Edit
> 123".

The title attribute on links is rarely, if ever, read. It is not the
default setting for links, nor an option that is commonly enabled. So,
this approach wouldn't solve the problem any way.

> A colleague of mine however thinks that the title should not include the
> identifier because they feel the issue is with JAWS not informing the
> user that it has reached the end of the row.

It's not the developer's responsibility to present semantics that the
screen reader can and should be able to present itself. We don't
present to the user, "Hey, this is a heading!" or "This is the start
of a list." JAWS will identify the end of the row, but only when the
user is navigating by table cells. When the screen reader is simply
reading through the page, it is logical and appropriate that it not
present this information. The behavior you're encountering is correct
and expected.

> I assume there is
> probably a configuration option to make JAWS identify the start and end
> of table rows?

Yes, but only when navigating the data table by cells (assuming your
table headers are properly marked up and associated).

But back to the link issue. This poses a unique problem. The links
don't make sense by themselves, but only make sense when presented in
the context of the row headers. This would pass WCAG 2.0 success
criteria 1.4.4 (Level A), but would fail 1.4.9 (Level AAA - it should
be AA, but I digress) which requires that links make sense all by
themselves. Relying on the row headers may cause additional effort by
the screen reader user to determine what item the links will affect.

Of course the most clear solution is to expand the link text to
present the identifier, but this might be confusing or extraneous for
sighted users. So, I'd recommend expanding the link text, but visually
hiding the additional text in a way that a screen reader will still
read it (http://webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/). Oh, and
still use the title attribute to provide the additional advisory
information for sighted users who might happen to hover their mouse
over the link. Just know that you can't rely on it for accessibility.

Jared Smith
WebAIM.org