Links

To make links accessible, provide a Title and a Tabindex tag in the "A href" element. A Title tag will provide an alternative description for the link and a Tabindex tag will ensure that links are navigated in the appropriate order. Create a meaningful description for the Title tag, and place the link on the name or title of the item.

Screen readers will announce that there is a link so it is unnecessary to include "Link to" in your description. Since users will often use links to tab through a document, make sure descriptions make sense out of context. Links to external web pages should be placed on the name or title (instead of the U R L), so that screen readers will read the description and not the URL code. It is also a good idea to put the U R L in parenthesis in case it is needed.

Code Example:

<p>
<a href="http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp"
tabindex="11"
title="Bobby site accessibility tool from Watchfire">Bobby</a>
(bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp)
</p>

Browsers

Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator show titles when the cursor passes over links. Neither show titles when tabbing through a document.

Adaptive Technology

I B M Home Page Reader will tab through links in the document by pressing Alt + L and . JAWS identifies the number of links in a page on start up and speaks link text as it reads or tabs through a document. It does not read link titles by default.