[thelist] Link and title accessibility

Todd Stadler tstadler at gmail.com
Mon Feb 27 17:50:14 CST 2006


On 2/27/06, Andreas Wahlin <andreaswahlin at bredband.net> wrote:
> If you have a link where the link-text is exactly the same as you
> imagine the title-text to be, you should omit the title attribut right?

I think so -- no need to be redundant.

> <a href="http://web.mit.edu/" title="Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology"><abbr title="Massachusetts Institute of Technology">MIT</
> abbr></a>

This would seem to fall under "redundant", so I wouldn't do it. It's
important to know that MIT stands for Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, so I'd keep it as the abbr title.

> Also, as a side note, titles such as
> title="Go to Massachusetts Institute of Technology homepage"
> must be quite unneccesary, as everyone knows that links go to homepages.
> title="Massachusetts Institute of Technology"
> Should suffice, right?

Not all links go to home pages, of course, but for those that do, I
tend not to give any title attribute, assuming that the anchor text is
self-explanatory.

Links to non-home pages or links whose anchor text is not
self-explanatory are ones that need a title attribute.

Whether these are best practices or merely mine is up for debate.

--

Todd Stadler, tstadler at gmail.com
"You try to warn them that the world's gone mad, but they won't listen
to you" -Snoopy


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