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Re: Generic Links

for

From: David Ashleydale
Date: Oct 31, 2012 4:12PM

Ryan,
I always thought that sentence you quoted was kind of an outlier and didn't
really make sense to me when paired with the sentence right before it, "If
the context for the link is not in the same sentence, paragraph, list item,
or table cell as the link, then the user will not be able to find out where
the link is going with any ease. If the user must leave the link to search
for the context, the context is not programmatically determined link
context and this failure condition occurs."

To me, the first sentence says that having a "click here" link in the
middle of a sentence is fine because of the context provided by the
sentence, but then the second sentence kind of negates that by saying you
shouldn't have to leave the link to figure out what it's for. So I read the
second sentence as, "If the user must leave the link to search for the
context (except in the cases just listed),..."

After all 2.4.4 does state, "The purpose of each
link<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#linkpurposedef>; can
be determined from the link text alone or from the link text together with
its programmatically determined link
context<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#pdlinkcontextdef>;..."
So the link text alone doesn't have to work on its own in order to satisfy
this criteria.

But I agree they could have worded that second sentence better.

Thanks,
David


On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Ryan E. Benson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> > I think the impact of such links is a bit overstated. Even WCAG 2.0
> > allows such links except at Level AAA. At Level AA, "more" and "click
> > here", etc. are allowed so long as the link makes sense in its
> > context, which based on WCAG's definition of this makes it nearly
> > impossible to fail. And in the cases where it would fail the context
> > requirement, it would almost certainly still pass because links that
> > are ambiguous to everyone are excluded.
>
> I am not sure about anybody else, but this doesn't set well with me.
> While what Jared said is essentially coming from WCAG, I think it is a
> complete contradiction on itself. On F36, which outlines the failures
> of 2.4.4, (http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/F63)
> it says "If the user must leave the link to search for the context,
> the context is not programmatically determined link context and this
> failure condition occurs." I read this as if I am browsing a page via
> just hitting tab (or pulling up a link list), versus by arrowing, I
> should be able to know what every link does without reading the
> sentence again. If my sentence was "click here for more details about
> WCAG", and click here was the linking words, I would have to leave the
> link to figure out where it went.
>
> --
> Ryan E. Benson
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Jared Smith < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, David Ashleydale wrote:
> >
> >> I'm trying to find a way to get rid of a generic "More" link on my site
> >
> > I think the impact of such links is a bit overstated. Even WCAG 2.0
> > allows such links except at Level AAA. At Level AA, "more" and "click
> > here", etc. are allowed so long as the link makes sense in its
> > context, which based on WCAG's definition of this makes it nearly
> > impossible to fail. And in the cases where it would fail the context
> > requirement, it would almost certainly still pass because links that
> > are ambiguous to everyone are excluded.
> >
> > In short, I wouldn't worry a lot about "More" links.
> >
> >> My first stab at getting rid of the More link was to just make the
> >> "Leadership and Governance" heading into a link to the "Leadership and
> >> Governance" page.
> >
> > I think this is a great approach. It does have a minor disadvantage of
> > providing an extra link that goes to the same location as the "More"
> > link, but this is outweighed by the benefits of the informative link.
> >
> >> So my next attempt was putting "More: Leadership and Governance" at the
> >> bottom of the layer, with "Leadership and Governance" as a link and the
> >> word "More" just as plain text.
> >
> > One approach may be to make "More: Leadership and Governance" the
> > link, but visually hide the ": Leadership and Governance" text so it
> > is only read by screen readers.
> >
> >> I'm almost coming to the conclusion that there is actually a case for
> >> keeping the link as just "More" (as along as its context
> >> can be programmatically determined, which I can do).
> >
> > If the link makes sense and there's a good case for keeping it, why
> > fight a battle to get rid of it simply for the sake of compliance?
> >
> > Jared
> > > > > > > > > >