WCAG Samurai question
So the final version of the WCAG Samurai errata to WCAG1.0 was published yesterday, and it all seems eminently sensible to me.
The only correction I don’t understand at the moment is this one, under Guideline 10:
Do not add non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces or not) between adjacent links unless the semantics of the document naturally would include such characters.
As I understand it, that means don’t do this:
<a href="a.html">A</a> | <a href="b.html">B</a>
Does anyone know what the reasoning is behind this decision? (I’m sure it makes sense, I’d just like to understand why.)
Filed under: Accessibility.
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Comments
- dotjay
- 75 days ago
The WCAG guideline covering this (to the best of my knowledge) is out of date, but people still implement these separating link characters; all they really do nowadays is insert noise into useful information.
As Stephane shows, “Link: a, Link: b” is far clearer, especially when read aloud at high speed as screen readers often do.
- #2
- Richard Conyard
- 75 days ago
It is probably in direct relation to:
WCAG 1
10.5 Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render adjacent links distinctly, include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces) between adjacent links. [Priority 3]Often this would get picked up by automated testers and the pipe was normally the character used (hell we used to do it as well until I heard how damned awful it sounded and realized how useless it was).
- #6
- Matthew Pennell
- 74 days ago
Thanks for the response, Joe (and everyone else). Makes sense.
- #7
Maybe because it’s read out loud in detail already by screen readers.
Compare:
1. “LINK, A, pipe, LINK, B” : by default links are already announced with a screen reader, meaning this is not useful for screen readers as they are already explicitly separated.
2. “LINK, A, Link, B”: No need for a separator.
And visually? Well, CSS to the rescue for borders and spaces.
This is my 2 cents / educated guess. We should just ask Joe Clark.