WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: external links & new windows

for

From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Nov 9, 2010 6:36PM

I wholeheartedly agree. In an earlier test, probing something else entirely, I had one user get upset when closing her view of a PDF also closed the browser. She fully expected it to open in the browser, but in a new window (this was before tabs were very common).

That's anecdotal, but we've made PDF links open new windows ever since and have had no complaints.

Cliff

>>> On 11/9/2010 at 7:09 PM, in message <AANLkTintfODoyrdRur0K=1Mbp+ <EMAIL REMOVED> >, Jared Smith < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Chris Hoffman wrote:

> One is for links that go to other sites, and the other is for links to non-HTML resources (PDFs, video files, etc.)

Perhaps hidden in this argument is the suggestion that users don't
overly care if it's a link to another site.

The file type, however, is pretty important information and should
probably be presented to everyone, not just screen reader users.
Having this information in the link would also be very useful for SEO.

> With Jared's comments about SEO dilution in mind, is there a good solution for these cases?

A good, though not perfect, solution is to write the content to the
link using JavaScript after page load. The WebAIM site currently uses
hidden text and a visible background icon for external links. We will
probably dynamically add this text and icon using JavaScript in a
future site release. You don't even have to give the link a class name
- just detect whether it links to someplace other than your own domain
and then add the class name and text if appropriate.

Jared