When visiting pages in Home > Community Initiatives > Drupal Core Improvements, e.g. http://drupal.org/node/364629 I am not able to access detailed information about each listed issue.

Detailed information regarding each issue is communicated using colour and the title attribute of the link for each issue. As a screen-reader user the title attribute is not read to me when there is sufficient link text to be read.

Recommendation:

The additional information should also be presented as part of the link text, as non link text, or as hidden link text following the suggestion in #526712: l() does not accept a parameter for supplemental text for screen-readers.

Comments

VM’s picture

Category: bug » feature
VM’s picture

Component: Textual improvements » Redesign
drumm’s picture

Project: Drupal.org site moderators » Project issue tracking
Version: » 6.x-1.x-dev
Component: Redesign » User interface

Project module makes these links.

Everett Zufelt’s picture

Category: feature » bug

Thanks for moving this to the correct place. Definitely a bug since it is affecting accessibility. Accessibility isn't a feature.

dww’s picture

Title: Community Initiatives > Drupal Core Improvements has inaccessible content » Issue reference filter creates content that isn't always accessible

You're saying the status of the issue in the title attribute isn't read? That's really too bad. Seems like a bug in screen readers, not a problem with this filter. All the information is already there in the output of the page, it's just that certain screen readers don't bother to read it to you if "there is sufficient link text to be read"? Ugh.

I guess we can stuff in the invisible span if we must, but it certainly seems like a lot of wasted markup and bandwidth just to work-around screen readers that don't read what's available to them...

Cheers,
-Derek

Everett Zufelt’s picture

@Derek,

You've got it correct.

Everett Zufelt’s picture

An interesting article on the title attribute and accessibility
http://ianpouncey.com/weblog/2010/01/title-attributes/

dww’s picture

@Everett

Thanks for the info. I'll try to make time to read the article some day. However, if I understand the situation correctly, wouldn't the goal of web accessibility be better served by putting energy into bug reports against screen readers that don't read what they should, instead of trying to get every website to add invisible spans to work around their bugs?

Everett Zufelt’s picture

It is arguable as to whether a screen-reader 'should' read a title attribute. What 'should' happen is quite subjective. I would argue that any important information should not be put in a title attribute or be made invisible, because of the myriad of devices used to access the web. Take for instance a keyboard only user, who also does not receive the tooltip text.