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Thread: Titles for non-visual UAs?
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Maximillian Schwanekamp
Date: Fri, Apr 15 2005 5:13PM
Subject: Titles for non-visual UAs?
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How exactly do screen readers typically render the title attribute of links or other elements? 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!
--
Maximillian Von Schwanekamp
http://www.neptunewebworks.com/
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Sat, Apr 16 2005 12:04AM
Subject: Re: Titles for non-visual UAs?
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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/
From: Maximillian Schwanekamp
Date: Sat, Apr 16 2005 1:06AM
Subject: Re: Titles for non-visual UAs?
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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/
From: Randy Pearson
Date: Sat, Apr 16 2005 7:38AM
Subject: Re: Titles for non-visual UAs?
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>> 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!
That strikes me as an over-reaction. If the text is worthy of being
displayed by a less-than-accessible "tooltip" style of presentation, it
would seem valuable enough to show on the form.
I would be inclined to handle this in a uniform manner, augmented with a CSS
class to allow global changes to your decision. Suppose you dub these text
snippets as "label clarifiers". You could then render a control something
like:
<div class="control">
<label for="txtBirthday">Birthday: </label>
<span class="labelClarifier">Please enter dates using MM-DD-YYYY
format.</span>
<input type="text" id="txtBirthday" value="" size="12" />
</div>
Now you could reduce that feeling of visual clutter by providing a softer
look to the additional text, while still keeping it available and
accessible. For example:
.labelClarifier{
font-size: 90%;
font-style: italic;
color: #666; /* somewhat gray */
}
This would make it easy to handle new decisions quickly, such as adding
"display: none;" to remove the text (perhaps as a user preference), etc.
-- Randy
___________
From: Steven Faulkner
Date: Mon, Apr 18 2005 12:08AM
Subject: RE: Titles for non-visual UAs?
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Hi Maximillian
I have begun documenting the display behaviour of title attributes in
various browser & screen readers.
I have pulled out a couple of data tables containing information relevant
to your question and put them in a word file:
http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/title-attribute.doc
with regards
Steven Faulkner
Web Accessibility Consultant
National Information & Library Service (NILS)
454 Glenferrie Road
Kooyong Victoria 3144
Phone: (613) 9864 9281
Fax: (613) 9864 9210
Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
National Information Library Service
A subsidiary of RBS.RVIB.VAF Ltd.
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