WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: transcript links

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Nov 9, 2017 12:32PM

Jon, I see your point, but I don't necessarily agree with it.
To look at the same sentence or paragraph, the user does need to
navigate outside the link, if only with the arrow keys. And we should
let screen reader implementation affect authoring techniques. If
announcing the preceeding heading is useful for users, there is no
reason (as far as I know) why screen readers can't implement a
shortcut key for it.

Headings are logical section labels (e.g. marking the start of a news
story), and thus are the most logical context for links with otherwise
identical text (e.g. the dreaded "read more").
I recommend 2.4.9 practices too, using either hidden text or, title,
or aria-describedby, but I still think that removing the heading from
sufficient context is not fair on authors, especially since it was
part of the WCAG specification and parts of it still linger in the
text. I thought the idea behind WCAG was that updates to the standard
were not supposed not cause change of conformance, though I admit I am
not sure.

But in the conformance section I have never seen that authors must
specify conformance with WCAG 2.0 as-of a specific date (which, if the
requirements of WCAG change, is essential).




On 11/9/17, Bourne, Sarah (MASSIT) < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Well, this doesn't seem quite right to me.
>> " The idea is that the user should be able to hear the context without
>> having to move focus from the link"
> That's a fine idea, but it's not stated as a requirement for 2.4.4. Under
> Intent of this Success Criterion it says, " In some situations, authors may
> want to provide part of the description of the link in logically related
> text that provides the context for the link. In this case the user should be
> able to identify the purpose of the link without moving focus from the
> link." "Should" is not the same as "must". And the Failure Criterion "F63:
> Failure of Success Criterion 2.4.4 due to providing link context only in
> content that is not related to the link" says that it fails " If the context
> for the link is not provided in one of the following ways:" and then gives
> "in the preceding heading" in the list.
>
> That being said, I usually encourage meeting 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only)
> whenever possible, by using visually-hidden text. I'm tempted to move to
> using ARIA-LABELLEDBY in situations like this, but there are still some
> glitches in browser/AT support [1]. And sometimes the link text can get
> overly long.
>
> [1]
> https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/a-aria-labelledby/
>
>
> Sarah E. Bourne
> Director of IT Accessibility
> Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS)
> 1 Ashburton Place, 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02108
> Office: (617) 626-4502
> <EMAIL REMOVED> | www.mass.gov/eotss
>
> > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.