WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Is same table row sufficient context for a link to meet SC 2.4.4?

for

From: Mark Magennis
Date: Jan 19, 2018 3:42AM

Dear all,

This is probably a very common situation. We have pages containing lists of multimedia assets - videos, audiobooks, e-books and online courses. Each asset has a title, type, and status (started, finished, etc.), followed by a link which is either Watch, Read, Listen, or Explore, depending on the asset type.

The lists are presented in tables with a row for each asset and columns for the title, type, and status and link.

The question is, must the link text include the asset type and title, for example "Watch video Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE8 Programmer"? Or is it okay to just leave the link as "Watch", given that the type and title are in the same row and are very likely to be read just before the link (the title is itself a link)? Is this sufficient context?

WCAG 2.4.4 lists some examples of sufficient context:
same paragraph
same list item
same table cell
table cell header
This doesn't include same table row, however. Failure F63 includes Example 2: A Link in an Adjacent Cell Within a Layout Table. But this example has the link in a different row from the contextual information, so it doesn't definitively answer the question. I note that JAWS has a keyboard shortcut to read the current table row (so the context is not only programmatically available, but also practically available to JAWS users). This may not be true of other ATs though. For example, I can't see a similar command in NVDA.

I feel this is nitpicking to some extent, but WCAG conformance is important in this case and I want to be true to both the spirit and the letter of SC 2.4.4.

Thanks,
Mark

Mark Magennis | Accessibility Support Manager
InterAccess.ie - Accessible UX