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Re: The buttons verses links debate

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jan 29, 2013 7:44PM


It makes perfect sense.
I am currently working with a lady who has been learning web design,
and she insists on having this flashing carousel on the website,
because "it looks so cool" and "took me such a long time to program
all by myself".
I am sure she's right on both points, she's very smart and quite
capable, but it doesn't change the fact it causes huge accessibility
issues.
The artof selling accessibility is always a tricky one.
Cheers
-B

On 1/29/13, Greg Gamble < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> No disrespect intended ... but maybe it’s the marketing, public relations,
> advertising, and publishing people that are wrong and just need to be
> educated on what works and what does not. Many times I've had a user wanting
> to have a certain "Look" only to realize, after I point them out, the
> usability problems it causes. The way a page looks does not always
> correspond to how it works ... hope that made sense. :-)
>
>
> Greg Gamble
> SBCTC - Olympia | Information Services
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Chagnon | PubCom
> Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 3:45 PM
> To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] The buttons verses links debate
>
> << I have always felt that buttons are actions and links are things to take
> you to places.>>
>
> Wait. Wait.
> This conflicts with the marketing, public relations, advertising, and
> publishing goals of nearly every website out there.
>
> WCAG is fairly limited in what it calls a "button" — a submit button or
> radio buttons, both of which are in forms. But to web developers, "button"
> means anything graphical that I want the user to click.
>
> If a web manager wants to highlight a new product, he'll make a button-like
> graphic that catches sighted visitors' eyes and encourages them to click and
> navigate to a webpage about the product. It's a fancy graphical button that
> takes the user to a new page on the website, so by your definition, this
> button acts like a link. Same thing about the Twitter and Facebook buttons
> common on webpages.
>
> I could just as well design a website with a link that submits a form,
> rather than a button that submits it. It might not be the convention to do
> that, but I can do it.
>
> So in web development, a discussion like this comes down to splitting hairs
> over the semantics between the words "button" and "link."
>
> Is this, really, what we want? Do we, the accessibility community, want to
> alienate marketing directors and web developers by preventing them from
> using "buttons" as links to their internal pages or to Twitter pages because
> of how we've defined those 2 words?
>
> Doesn't WCAG 2.0 gives us the guidance we need? Have meaningful text that
> defines the purpose of the link, whether that link is in the form of a
> button or text. If it will submit a form, tell the user. If it will take
> them to a new webpage, tell them.
>
> Maybe WCAG can improve on how we notify users about the difference between
> "an action that will take place" and "navigation to someplace new," but if
> we redefine the words "button" and "link" for web developers, we'll win a
> skirmish and lose the war.
>
> As a former editor, I could easily argue that "taking you to a new place" is
> just as much an "action" as submitting a form.
>
> —Bevi Chagnon
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