WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Titles for non-visual UAs?

for

From: Maximillian Schwanekamp
Date: Apr 16, 2005 1:06AM

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> It depends on the screen reader.


Well, er, I imagine so! Same goes for visual browsers, or the same browser across devices. Yet, knowing what the major visual browsers will do with my markup gives a pretty good idea of what 99.999% of our my site visitors using visual browsers will see. That in turn allows me to make design decisions with at least a clue. Not having access to real screen reader software (Fangs and FoxyVoice are all I have to go by), I am not really sure how titles are rendered.

> 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.


Indeed. That's my intent.

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


Yes, along with proper semantic and easily-linearized markup. I'm not an accessibility pro by any means, but I do have accessibility in mind. Thank you for the response Jukka, but I was just wanting to know how a *typical* screen reader (e.g. JAWS) treats the title attribute. Google has ceased its campaign of hate against me, and I found an answer in a post from Derek Featherstone:
http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_message.php?id=5078

Alas, that thread suggests that the title attribute is not reliably an accessible method to add non-essential (but potentially helpful) advisory text. Putting such text on the form as document content reduces usability for all by adding clutter, so I guess I'll just get rid of it entirely!

--
Maximillian Von Schwanekamp
http://www.neptunewebworks.com/