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RE: title attribute of anchor tag

for

From: Jim Thatcher
Date: Feb 20, 2004 6:56PM

Hi all,

Window-Eyes doesn't read the title attribute on the link - as far as I can
determine. Reading this discussion is amusing - the problem described seems
similar the one that got a government agency (agency's web developer) in hot
water (from my perspective) as documented in
http://jimthatcher.com/whatnot.htm.

It would be helpful to see the site (page) but, in my opinion, if the "extra
information" is readily available when you get to the link, it would be
better just to leave things alone - without jumping through hoops of
invisible gifs and extra alt text.

Jim
Accessibility, What Not to do: http://jimthatcher.com/whatnot.htm.
Web Accessibility Tutorial: http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm.


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Bohman [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 11:06 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: title attribute of anchor tag

Other screen readers don't automatically read the title attribute
either. As was mentioned before, Home Page Reader only reads the title
with an obscure keyboard shortcut. I tested briefly with Window Eyes,
and couldn't get it to read the title, but I admit that I'm not an
expert Window Eyes user. If anyone out there knows more about how Window
Eyes reads the title attribute, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

The option of using CSS to place the text off screen, combined with
Andrew's suggestion to use onfocus and onblur, still seems like a more
universal workaround to your particular dilemma.

Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> Be careful. You might have heard that this is true, and it is, as long as
> the user's preference is set to read titles on links. In JAWS you can set
> it to read one of three things:
> A) screen text
> B) title attribute
> C) longest (of the title and the screen text)
>
> I believe that the setting is "screen text" by default.
>
> AWK
>
--
Paul Ryan Bohman
Web Accessibility Specialist/Project Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu



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