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Re: Support for link Title tag?

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Nov 1, 2004 12:36PM

> We are working on an enterprise header to appear on all our pages, and
> we have three tool icons as part of the header ("Email this page",
> "Watch this page", and "Add this page to my links"). We would like to
> present these using CSS instead of images with rollovers, in order to
> streamline the code and not use Javascript. However, if they are not
> images, we can't add ALT text.

These are links that serve a functional purpose. As such, they are content
and belong in the actual HTML of the page...not the CSS. So if you are only
displaying icons, then these should be IMG tags with alt and title
attributes.

> We do have a "title", but is that well
> supported by screen readers? We are also considering adding text links
> before each tool icon with "display:none" - would that work for screen
> readers?

AFAIK, Title attributes are only read by screen readers if the end-user
explicitely turns this option on.

As for display: none, no, that won't work. What you can do, though, is
position the text off screen:

text

..toolText {
display: block;
position: absolute;
top:0px;
left:-1000px;
}

However, all that said, in terms of usability, it probably makes sense to
leave the text on screen.

-Darrel