The use of hidden headings for navigation is of benefit to anyone whose user agent does not support CSS, not just screen reader users. We are seeing an increasing number of sites built that way and there isn't a downside that I can think of so perhaps it should become standard practice.
Screen readers do not read 'title' attributes by default. You can configure some to read 'title' attributes instead of the on-page text but no one is going to have that as a permanent setting. You can also read the 'title' attribute for a specific element but that presupposes the user knows which elements have 'title' attributes. Tooltips of any kind can be a nuisance for screen magnifier users because even a small one can obscure a large proportion of the screen at modest magnification levels. It is even worse when the tooltip is caused by the 'title' attribute for a structural element such as a paragraph or a div because the user does not know where to move the mouse to get rid of it. It may not even be possible if the element fills the entire screen. For this reason I would not recommend using a 'title' attribute for a list. Steve Green Director Test Partners Ltd / First Accessibility www.testpartners.co.uk www.accessibility.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Antonios Sarhanis Sent: 24 January 2007 23:00 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WSG] Title attributes I give headings to my navigation, as well as other areas on the page, but the headings are hidden (position: absolute; left: -100em) so that they can be read by a screen reader. >From what I've read, title attributes should only be sparingly and in special cases where more information might be helpful rather than annoying. Having the title say exactly what a piece of text says is completely useless, and having the title say something slightly different to what a piece of text says only makes things annoying for users with a screen reader that might have to read both instances of the very similar text. ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
