WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Links open in new tab or window in LMS

for

From: glen walker
Date: Oct 5, 2018 10:09AM

Joe is spot on regarding usability vs accessibility.

If your links have a visual clue next to them to indicate they open in a
new page and you **didn't** indicate that to AT users, that would be an
accessibility issue. You can see a good example of the external link on
https://webaim.org/resources/, under the first h2 heading, "Popular
Resources", the "WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool" link has an icon
next to it to indicate it opens in a new window/tab. It also has an
":after" pseudo class that adds "external link" to the accessible name and
is announced by AT. So there's a visual clue and an AT clue that the link
opens in a new window/tab.