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RE: Repeating the same link phrase

for

From: Jukka Korpela
Date: Sep 3, 2002 4:42AM

Kynn Bartlett wrote:

> At 12:36 PM +0300 9/2/02, Jukka Korpela wrote:
> >Surely that "Download" is superfluous. As a rule of thumb, a
> link text
> >should not contain a verb in the imperative.
>
> A matter of style, though.

Yes - and at some point, good style becomes an accessibility issue, not just
"style". For example, unnecessarily complicated or pointlessly artistic or
disturbingly verbose textual content surely violates checkpoint 14.1, "Use
the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content" - which
is a rather debatable checkpoint, but I guess we all agree that there is an
important accessibility issue involved.

> I can easily see link titles being
> action verbs such as "download" -- I don't buy your rule of thumb.

OK, let us agree to disagree on that. I suppose your implicit point here is
that although any link is equally a "download" link and a "follow this
and..." link, some links are more equally "download" links, i.e. they are
primarily intended for fetching a resource and saving it onto local disk.
They might even appear on a separate "Download area" page. But even then,
does "Download" belong to the _link text_? I would say that not any more
than "View" belongs to the text of a link that is mainly intended to provide
access to a resource in visual presentation, such as a link to an image.
Objectively, a "Download" prefix makes the link less useful in an alphabetic
(or other) list of links, as a rule.

> It may be your personal style preference, but I think it's nothing
> more than that.

Well, maybe a little more. I would like to cite the same sources that I have
cited in my treatise/rant on "Click here",
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/click.html
since several basic arguments are well transferable from "Click" to
"Download":

"Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of
context -- either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text
should also be terse.
For example, in HTML, write "Information about version 4.3" instead of
"click here". - -"
WCAG 1.0, guideline 13

"Try to avoid references in the text to online aspects. "See the section on
device independence" is better than "For more on device independence, click
here.""
TimBL, "Style Guide for online hypertext"

"Users with dyslexia may have problems reading long pages - -. Selecting
words with high information content as hypertext anchors will help these
users, as well as blind users, scan for interesting links (no "click here",
please)."
Jakob Nielsen, alertbox "Accessible Design for Users With Disabilities"

--
Jukka Korpela, senior adviser
TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre
http://www.tieke.fi
Phone: +358 9 4763 0397 Fax: +358 9 4763 0399


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