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From: Alan Zaitchik
Date: Mon, Jul 11 2016 2:08PM
Subject: bibliographic citations
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Any help most appreciated.

We are trying to make as accessible as possible an existing web site that features bibliographic references formatted according to Wikipedia style, with superscripted square brackets around a number. The number links to an item in a bibliography at the end of the article. (Hope that makes sense.)

Is there a recommended "best practice" for handling citations to make them as accessible as possible, both to users of screen readers as well as to sighted but mobility restricted, keyboard-only users? I am not sure there is any reason the Wikiperdia approach would worse than other approaches; it seems to me the brackets and superscripting makes it visually more clear to those with some sight that we have a citation, but I ask nonetheless. Related: what markup should be placed around the <a>? Is there an ARIA landmark that should be used? Is there support for the HTLM4 <cite> tag?

In short: what is the best strategy here?

Thanks!
Alan

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Wed, Jul 13 2016 2:28PM
Subject: Re: bibliographic citations
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Sounds like you want accessible footnotes.
We (me and my Deque colleagues CB Averitt and Melanie Phillip) were
playing around with the most accessible way to code footnotes.
YOu can see a demo here:
http://a11yideas.com/testcode/footnotesONeToOne.html
The idea is to use the superscript and [], Wikipedia style, but make
the references into links with a corresponding link in the footnote
that takes the user back to the reference.
The JavaScript on the page is necessary when multiple references are
made to a single footnote.
The JavaScript remembers where the last reference came from and sends
the user back there.
This is just an idea we are toying with but might give you an idea.
There was a clever ARIA attribute devised for this scenario,
aria-flowto, but it only works in Jaws with Firefox, nowhere else, so
its use is extremely limited.

<cite> is not announced by screen readers, unless you turn on special
speech schemes in Jaws. I think NVDA and Voiceover do not offer suers
a way to take advantage of these, though I am not 100% sure, and want
to be wrong.




On 7/11/16, Alan Zaitchik < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Any help most appreciated.
>
> We are trying to make as accessible as possible an existing web site that
> features bibliographic references formatted according to Wikipedia style,
> with superscripted square brackets around a number. The number links to an
> item in a bibliography at the end of the article. (Hope that makes sense.)
>
> Is there a recommended "best practice" for handling citations to make them
> as accessible as possible, both to users of screen readers as well as to
> sighted but mobility restricted, keyboard-only users? I am not sure there is
> any reason the Wikiperdia approach would worse than other approaches; it
> seems to me the brackets and superscripting makes it visually more clear to
> those with some sight that we have a citation, but I ask nonetheless.
> Related: what markup should be placed around the <a>? Is there an ARIA
> landmark that should be used? Is there support for the HTLM4 <cite> tag?
>
> In short: what is the best strategy here?
>
> Thanks!
> Alan
> > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

From: Marc Solomon
Date: Wed, Jul 13 2016 2:57PM
Subject: Re: bibliographic citations
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Bikir,
Thanks for your all of the great work you do. The URL you provided resulted in a page not found response. But, when I checked the parent directory, I found the following links that relate to footnote examples:
http://a11yideas.com/testcode/footnotesManyToOneMobileUsingRelative.html
http://a11yideas.com/testcode/footnotesManyToOneMobile.html
http://a11yideas.com/testcode/footnotesManyToOne.html
http://a11yideas.com/testcode/footnotes.html
http://a11yideas.com/testcode/footnotes-MP.html
Best,
Marc

From: Marc Solomon
Date: Wed, Jul 13 2016 2:59PM
Subject: Re: bibliographic citations
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And apologies for spelling your name wrong in my past post Birkir.

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Wed, Jul 13 2016 3:02PM
Subject: Re: bibliographic citations
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Oh my bad for not providing the correct URL, sorry bout that.


On 7/13/16, Marc Solomon < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> And apologies for spelling your name wrong in my past post Birkir.
>
>