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Re: Icon instead of text > open in new window

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 16, 2017 7:17AM

True, the spec can use lots more work.
In fact, I am not even sure what alt=" " should translate to (to take
an older example). Should it mark the image as presentational, or is
it really assign an empty white space as the alt text for an image. I
have dug around the specs and not seen a definitive answer.
There are series of other ARIA ambituities that are puzzling to people
trying to use it. I will bring up some of those in my presentation on
ID 24 on June 9th (ARIA 51).
Good discussion guys, I never claim infallibility. I believe it one of
my better qualities in fact.
One thing to add re using an icon with an alt text (which is a
perfectly valid technique, and in some ways a better one than the
title attribute).
If you do, make sure the icon and its alt text are placed after the
link text, else every link that opens in a new window will start with
the words "opens in a new window.
It is not a WCAG violation per se, but it will make link text boring,
wordy, and irritating for a screen reader user.



On 5/16/17, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> The whole set of documents/specs around accessible name and accessible
>> description are, to put it mildly, confusing and obtuse. Lots of
>> overlapping, cross-referencing separate docs
>
> Yes, and the language about concatenation can trip up some people as well.
> There are also a number of ambiguities that need to be cleared up. For
> example, what happens with aria-label="" (null) or an aria-label=" " (a
> space or non-breakable space)? Is a space the accessible or name or does
> the algorithm consider that there is no valid aria-label and move on to the
> next step?
>
> There are also a number of edge cases around sub-tree and referenced content
> that is hidden with different techniques and don't forget to include pseudo
> content as well!
>
>> In the case of links, I'd recommend looking at
>> https://w3c.github.io/html-aam/#a-element
>
> I'd second this as a great resource.
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 703.637.8957 (Office)
>
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