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Re: Identifying link targets

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Sep 21, 2004 11:16AM

Martin asked:

>
> The link "Read More" appears multiple times on a page. When a person
> with a screen reader brings up the list of links, the links will be
> out of context, and so the user can't tell where a "Read More" link
> will go. Instead of "Read More" you can link the text within the
> sentence or phrase.

This is the same issue I'm having that I mentioned in a previous post with
the PDF/Word links issue.

The ideal solution, IMHO, is to use TITLE attributes for the links to
uniquely define them. BUT, I'm not sure if screen readers, by default, read
TITLE attributes. If they don't, I suppose it's a rather futile solution.

> This seems a good compromise but we're aware that it's not quite 100%
> foolproof in that some screen reader users may have turned off link
> descriptions.

Ah, yes...exactly. So, this is a recommended solution by the RNIB?

Is it fair to assume that those using a screen reader that encounter the
'duplicate links with the same name' issue would likely turn on the reading
of the TITLE attributes? (I guess I have exactly the same question as
Martin...apologies for being the echo in here ;o)

Lists38 suggested:

> A possibiliy would be to add a short title
> The 11th Duke of Devonshire's memoir, 'Accidents of Fortune' is now on
> sale
> Read more about 'Accidents of Fortune'

This is good, but causes issues with how to actually implement it with a
CMS. How would you your CMS to intelligently trim a long title? In my case,
where I need to list a document, and then provide a link to two different
file formats of the document, repeating the name of the document would get
incredibly verbose.

This is one of those cases where I feel Assistive Technology accessibility
can interfere with non AT usability...as much as I hate to admit it.

I did suggest using a semantic table in my last post, but didn't get much
feedback on whether it is a valid option. Something like this:

-------------------------------------------------------
TH(title) Memoir hits the shelves
-------------------------------------------------------
TD (teaser) The 11th Duke of Devonshire's memoir,
'Accidents of Fortune' is now on sale
-------------------------------------------------------
TD (link) Read More
-------------------------------------------------------

Would this accomodate a screen reader (reading the Read More link but also
the TH for the column)? Granted, for one article, this seems to be markup
overkill, but it is semantic, so perhaps a valid option.

-Darrel