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Re: Titles for non-visual UAs?

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Apr 16, 2005 12:04AM

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Maximillian Schwanekamp wrote:


>> How exactly do screen readers typically render the title attribute of
>> links or other elements?


It depends on the screen reader.


>> I'd like to use titles to provide
>> descriptive/help info on some of my forms, but I'm hesitant due to lack
>> of knowledge about how titles are rendered non-visually. TIA!


Ignorance is a bliss, and knowing that is even better. Knowing that
you can't know how title attributes are rendered, or whether they
are rendered at all, is the most important thing about those
attributes. Use them for non-essential remarks only.

(You can't know how they are rendered visually either. But we do know that
when they are rendered at all, the rendering is of poor quality in the
vast majority of browsing situations: tiny text, which disappears
if the user gets interested enough to try to really read it.)

For form fields, include explanations (or links to explanations)
as normal document content, preferably before the field.

-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/