WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: (Title element) WAS WCAG 2.1 - 1.3.5 - How to capture a violation?

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jul 30, 2018 11:40AM

Agreed.
For clarity, we are talking about the title attribute, not the title element.

The Accessible name calculation algorithm has allowed use of the title
attribute as a source of accessible name for years.
It is accessible to more people than aria-label, which is purely a
screen reader solution, without CSS or JavaScript custom
implementation.
For focusable element the title attribute is supported as a source of
accessible name by the vast majority of common browser and screen
reader combinations.

Removing a valid source of accessible name from the accessible name
algorithm that has been stable and used for years, on thousands of
pages, needs a pretty strong justification in my opinion.
It creates a lot of work and makes accessibility standards less
credible and robust.
Imagine recommending the use of a certain HTmL or ARIA attribute
because it solves a problem and it is a valid technique listed in a
standard.
If there is precedent that such attributes are removed from the
standard down the road, a product owner is not going to allocate
deverloper time to add this attribute.

Assistive technology support is not a valid reason , as far as I know,
so what is?


On 7/30/18, Joseph Sherman < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I saw the exchange, that the Title element is no longer part of the
> accessible name calculation. We have been using the following code for some
> font icons- the plug in we are using allows only the addition of the Title
> element to the font icons repository. Manually adding labels for every use
> of the font icons is impractical, as most folks adding the icons are not
> code savvy, they just use the WYSWYG editor.
>
> <a class="ts-font-icons-link " href="http://*/news/rss.html" target="_blank"
> title="RSS Feed"><i class="ts-font-icon icon-rss_ko"
> style="background-color:#ffffff; width: auto; height: auto; font-size: 31px;
> line-height: 100%;color:#353a3d;"></i></a>
>
> Wouldn't it have be better to add the Title element to AT instead of
> removing it from the Specification?
>
> Joseph
>
>
>