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Re: what order is link title read in?

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Mar 25, 2011 1:33PM

E.J. Zufelt wrote:

> The title attribute of an anchor is almost never read when there is
> anchor text with the default configuration of screen-readers.

Perhaps more importantly, the link text is the primary text for the link,
and for the vast majority of users, it's the only link text they perceive.
In particular, the example...

>> <a href="/filepath " title="about the case for usability in the
>> government">Learn More</a>

...is bad usage, since the primary link text is "Learn More", spelled oddly
(as if "More" were a proper noun), not indicative of the content of the
target of the link. It's common to use such link texts, especially when
presenting headlines of news, but it's still bad usage. Think about a list
of links on a page, filled with some number of "Learn More" links.

There's often no simple solution, but basically, you should try to put the
description in the link text, e.g.: Learn more: <a
href="/filepath">Usability in the government</a>.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/