You're right, Patrick, but life is a series of compromises. I spend a lot of effort in getting users to my site, and I don't want to go sending them away again with a link on my site. If they want to click on a link external to my site, they get a new window so their existing window stays in my site.
It's not accessible, that's true, but if they stay inside my site, no new windows open. And I'm not going to go sending 97% of users out of my site with a link, just so 3% can have an accessible access to that one or two links. We're talking about a minority of links on the site that lead outside the site, and a minority of users who are affected. So I think it's a fair compromise, to make external links less accessible. One of the most important aspects of a site's success is getting traffic and keeping it in the site, and we ought not to lose sight of that in our pursuit of accessibility. What use is a fully accessible site that gets pulled down because it's a failure on economic or other grounds? Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Griffiths Sent: Sunday, 18 April 2004 7:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] target="_blank" substitute > This is both an accessible and valid method: Valid yes, but accessible? I click on a link. I look at the page. I try to click on the back button. "What? Why doesn't this work? Oh. Because it's opened in a new window". Close window. Return to the site (and page) I want to be on. This whole malarkey makes the site less accessible for me, let alone for a person who can't actually see what's going on. [snip] ---------------- Patrick Griffiths (PTG) http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/ http://www.htmldog.com ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
