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Re: Link labels and APA citations

for

From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Oct 19, 2014 9:56PM

John wrote:
"That the entire notion of a document that can "zoom you off" to another
completely different document with a click of a mouse-button or Enter key is
completely foreign to "conventional" (i.e. dead-tree) publishing?"

Nah. Not a valid analogy.

In printed publications, the user went to the library, found the referenced
book, and read it. Nothing prevented the reader from reading the reference.
In electronic publishing, the user clicks a link which takes him to the same
referenced book.

Regardless of the method of publishing (print, web, digital document),
publishers have always assumed that the reader would go to the referenced
citation for:
- Bibliographic entries.
- Footnotes.
- Source notes for statistical data and research.
- Other cross-references.

In printed documents, your legs do the walking to the reference.
In electronic versions, your fingers do the clicking to the reference.

Same expectation by the publisher.
Same result for the user...they find and read the reference.


John wrote:
"But how many of these style-guide 'owners' have approached the W3C with an
open hand and an offer to work together? Why should the accessibility
community always go chasing after the establishment? Why not for a change
they come visit us? (Just saying...)"

Really? Why should they go to you?

1) They're key partners with the world's content creators. They're part of
the workflow that creates and controls nearly every professional-quality
piece of content out there, including government, academia, education, SMT,
advertising, general information.

2) They've been around 100 years longer than the W3C and WAI. They are the
establishment.

3) And if you really have everyone's best interests in mind, why wouldn't
you approach them to join you at W3C / WAI so that through them, you could
reach the entire professional community of content creators and meet
accessibility goals quicker? That would be a smart, effective way to make
the world's information as accessible as possible.

4) Not approaching them is a very naive strategy if you want to get a lot of
people to join your efforts.


John wrote:
"WCAG 2 was never intended to be used as a bully-stick ("do this or else you
FAIL compliance")"

Maybe that's not what WAI intended, but that's how US Federal agencies and
their 508-compliance offices interpret it. It IS a bully-stick and a
document either passes or fails.

Getting back to the original topic, meaningful text in hyperlinks, here's a
real-life example:
The original document contained this text:
"For more information about XYZ, see www.agency.gov/xya.html" and the URL
was hyperlinked.

So to meet the agency's WCAG interpretation, it was changed to:
"More information about XYZ" and the entire phrase that I have in quotes was
hyperlinked so that it would have "meaningful text."

How does this help sighted users? Or users that print the document? A
printed, viewable URL was eliminated from the document this way. It also
eliminated the branding of the agency (because the URL is no longer
visible), therefore defeating a major goal of communication.

- Bevi Chagnon
- PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers, and Developers.
- Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.
- 508 Workshop: www.workshop.pubcom.com
- US Federal Training: www.gpo.gov/customers/theinstitute.htm