WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Separating adjacent links

for

From: Pony Smith
Date: Jul 27, 2005 1:27PM

Hello everybody,

I've got a question about separating adjacent links.
The WCAG 1.0 states as a level 3 priority:

"10.5 Until user agents (including assistive
technologies) render adjacent links distinctly,
include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by
spaces) between adjacent links."

I've done this using the vertical bar character, which
from what I've seen is a fairly conventional usage.
However, when I asked a JAWS user to review the site,
he told me that the repetition of 'vertical bar' on a
long list of links (a list of alphabetical jump links
targeting anchors further down the page for example)
is very disruptive and unnecessary.

What's the convention then? Is it better to create a
vertical bar image and give it alt="" even though that
may not be considered a 'printable character'?

Pony Smith

___
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com