ISSUE-26: I don't think we should have an example that doesn't self reference
Self ref ARIA 7
I don't think we should have an example that doesn't self reference
- State:
- OPEN
- Product:
- Raised by:
- David MacDonald
- Opened on:
- 2014-06-09
- Description:
- "The specified behavior of aria-labelledby is that the associated label text is announced instead of the link text (not in addition to the link text)."
aria-labelledby replaces the link text (e.g. learn more)in the anchor, which prohibits screen readers from knowing the actual text, and may cause a probably if they are trying to find it.
We should only have self referencing examples so they will hear "Storms hit east coast, learn more".
I don't think we should provide an example that prevents screen reader for accessing some content on the screen that is accessible to sighted users.
Current language:
"The specified behavior of aria-labelledby is that the associated label text is announced instead of the link text (not in addition to the link text). When the link text itself should be included in the label text, the ID of the link should be referenced as well in the string of IDs forming the value of the aria-labelledby attribute."
I created a pull request with this but we are still ironing out bugs in the pull request process for techniques and in light of our May 15 deadline, this seems the more secure venue to address the concern.
Proposed Change:
Suggested language:
"The specified behavior of aria-labelledby is that the associated label text is announced instead of the link text (not in addition to the link text). THerefore when used to provide link context the ID of the link should be referenced as well in the string of IDs forming the value of the aria-labelledby attribute. This will cause the link text itself to be included in the label text along with the text referenced by aria-labelledby"
The first example would self reference.
<h2 id="headline">Storms hit east coast</h2>
<p>Torrential rain and gale force winds have struck the east coast, causing flooding in many coastal towns.
<a href="news.html" id="p35" aria-labelledby="headline p35">Read more...</a></p> - Related Actions Items:
- No related actions
- Related emails:
- Re: Cleaning up working branches (from cooper@w3.org on 2017-08-28)
- WCAG-ISSUE-26 (Self ref ARIA 7): I don't think we should have an example that doesn't self reference (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2014-06-09)
Related notes:
Isn't it a bit too prescriptive to rule out situations where the text referenced by aria-labelledby does not include the replaced link text? As long as the short link (with context) and the link text provided via aria-labelledby are functionally equivalent I don't see a problem.
Think about this admittedly clumsy but probably valid example:
(h2) id="headline">(span id="keyword")Storms(/span) hit east coast (h2)
(p)Torrential rain and gale force winds have struck the east coast, causing flooding in many coastal towns.
(a href="news.html" aria-labelledby="more about keyword")Read (span id="more")more(/span) (span class="invisible" id="about")about(/span)(/a)(/p)
...Which should produce the screen reader output "More about storns".
I'm not saying this is better than the self-referencing output "Storms hit east coast, learn more" (although I would prefer it). Without CSS rthere would now be the ugly visible fragment Read more about" but I am sure authors will encounter situations where it is better not to self-reference.
Having said that, I don't mind changing the example in the way proposed (i.e. including a reference to the link).
Note 22 and 26 are addressing the same issue, there are comments towards each issue, so I'll leave them both open... but they'll be closed at the same time...
David MacDonald, 29 Jul 2014, 18:51:36Display change log
