4 ms·

A screen reader should be smart enough to read out what the link is for.

hombre_fatal 1y ago
How do you imagine that working? By reading surrounding text or by reading the URL? Those are worse experiences than descriptive anchor text. You can use something like macOS VoiceOver right now to see how it behaves.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  >By reading surrounding text Yes, or it can summarize the text and explain what the link is to.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    LLMs attempt that, but their success is mixed - sometimes the summary is very bad.
  - DrewADesign 1y ago
    Imagine how long it would take to load a page of HN search results, or the table of contents of an online book, or a page with a lot of dead links, or a page with links to a whole bunch of non-textual content that it has to figure out is non-textual.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      You don't need to load where the link is going. The base line is the context a sighted person would have when they see the "click here" link.
      - DrewADesign 1y ago
        While that would work in many situations, I think the number of edge cases would be too great to make it reliable as a primary mode for communicating meaning in an accessible interface. As an alternative assistive feature? Sure. Something to rely on? I'll believe it when I hear it.
- AlienRobot 1y ago
  If only there were 4 different HTML attributes[1][2][3][4] you could use to add a descriptive label to an arbitrary HTML element.... 1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Global_attributes/title https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/... 2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Attributes/aria-label https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... 3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Attributes/aria-description https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... 4. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Attributes/aria-describedby https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A...
  - cluckindan 1y ago
    One would hope those work the same in every browser + screen reader + language combination, but alas, it is not so.
    - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
      So maybe those user agents (the browsers and screen readers) should fix their shit instead. Crazy idea, I know.
      - cluckindan 1y ago
        They definitely should. However, those will be large investments, so at least JAWS and VoiceOver are going to be waiting for WCAG 3.0 before tackling that. NVDA is open source, so I guess you could help them out with it. ;-) The larger issue is that developing software for multiple platforms and multiple browsers and multiple different types of human interface devices (from eye tracking to sip-and-puff joysticks) from dozens of vendors is an extremely complex affair. Users may even employ multiple different screen readers in different contexts to work around incompatibilities.
        snickerdoodle12 1y ago
- crazygringo 1y ago
  > By reading surrounding text Yes, exactly, if ARIA tags haven't been provided. It's not exactly rocket science to have some heuristics that check if a link is solely "click", "click here", etc., and it reads the entire sentence if that's the case. Seems like it would work 99+% of the time with exceedingly little effort. There's no expectation, and should be no expectation, that the function of a link should be derivable directly from the text it encloses.
  - account42 1y ago
    It feels like the screen reader industry has somehow managed to bully the entire web into making things easy for them instead of improving their own software.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      Good. The web industry needs a lot MORE bullies forcing developers to build things in more predictable ways. Besides, AMP is the almighty master of this practice, and they’re not trying to help disabled people, they’re trying to control the internet.
    - sn0wleppard 1y ago
      It's a travesty how much "Freedom" Scientific charges for a developer JAWS licence
- ghusto 1y ago
  > How do you imagine that working? By reading surrounding text or by reading the URL? Yes. If I had "Amaya!" as the link text to download something, I'd be not much better off and would reach for context too. What's the problem with reading the surrounding text or the URL?
  - recursive 1y ago
    It's less reliable than the author just telling you what it is. And more expensive too.
donatj 1y ago
What I have learned after years of working with accessibility experts is that screen readers are largely incapable pieces of junk that need to be lead around manually. They don't try to be helpful, they only do exactly what they are told. Frankly I think there's rear space for interruption here, particularly with AI.
- snickerdoodle12 1y ago
  The hilarious part is that we somehow wound up in a situation where the screen readers are useless pieces of crap but instead of fixing those every developer making a website is held responsible instead.
  - rpd9803 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
      I'm embarrassed for the screen reader software for needing so much help.
      - jodrellblank 1y ago
        If you serve your UI as out-of-order HTML content abusing tables for browser layout, if you merge broken fragments of mismatched XHTML from a content management system to cobble a page together on the fly, if you hide items behind burger menus, if you make interactivity from CSS and minified Javascript to visually look like input boxes and buttons instead of using standard buttons, if you add overlays and blocks to stop people selecting or copying text, if you care nothing about tab order and keyboard shortcuts and image alt text, if you reflow text around images, if you name CSS identifiers with no semantic meaning, if you mix in arbitrary advertising and tracking and framework session state, why is a screenreader "a piece of crap" for not being able to magically infer a human interpretation of the page? Why is it embarrassing to need to code against standardised accessibility interfaces so that other tools using those interfaces can function? Is it embarrassing to have to code against a database or filesystem interface to persist data, or a graphics interface to show pictures?
pacifika 1y ago
Why would every client process the context to the link, when the author can do this once and add it to the link, that's much more efficient.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Because you can't trust people to do extra work themselves.

How do you imagine that working? By reading surrounding text or by reading the URL? Those are worse experiences than descriptive anchor text. You can use something like macOS VoiceOver right now to see how it behaves.

charcircuit 1y ago
>By reading surrounding text Yes, or it can summarize the text and explain what the link is to.
- bluGill 1y ago
  LLMs attempt that, but their success is mixed - sometimes the summary is very bad.
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  Imagine how long it would take to load a page of HN search results, or the table of contents of an online book, or a page with a lot of dead links, or a page with links to a whole bunch of non-textual content that it has to figure out is non-textual.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    You don't need to load where the link is going. The base line is the context a sighted person would have when they see the "click here" link.
    - DrewADesign 1y ago
      While that would work in many situations, I think the number of edge cases would be too great to make it reliable as a primary mode for communicating meaning in an accessible interface. As an alternative assistive feature? Sure. Something to rely on? I'll believe it when I hear it.
AlienRobot 1y ago
If only there were 4 different HTML attributes[1][2][3][4] you could use to add a descriptive label to an arbitrary HTML element.... 1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Global_attributes/title https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/... 2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Attributes/aria-label https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... 3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Attributes/aria-description https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... 4. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Attributes/aria-describedby https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A...
- cluckindan 1y ago
  One would hope those work the same in every browser + screen reader + language combination, but alas, it is not so.
  - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
    So maybe those user agents (the browsers and screen readers) should fix their shit instead. Crazy idea, I know.
    - cluckindan 1y ago
      They definitely should. However, those will be large investments, so at least JAWS and VoiceOver are going to be waiting for WCAG 3.0 before tackling that. NVDA is open source, so I guess you could help them out with it. ;-) The larger issue is that developing software for multiple platforms and multiple browsers and multiple different types of human interface devices (from eye tracking to sip-and-puff joysticks) from dozens of vendors is an extremely complex affair. Users may even employ multiple different screen readers in different contexts to work around incompatibilities.
      - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
crazygringo 1y ago
> By reading surrounding text Yes, exactly, if ARIA tags haven't been provided. It's not exactly rocket science to have some heuristics that check if a link is solely "click", "click here", etc., and it reads the entire sentence if that's the case. Seems like it would work 99+% of the time with exceedingly little effort. There's no expectation, and should be no expectation, that the function of a link should be derivable directly from the text it encloses.
- account42 1y ago
  It feels like the screen reader industry has somehow managed to bully the entire web into making things easy for them instead of improving their own software.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Good. The web industry needs a lot MORE bullies forcing developers to build things in more predictable ways. Besides, AMP is the almighty master of this practice, and they’re not trying to help disabled people, they’re trying to control the internet.
  - sn0wleppard 1y ago
    It's a travesty how much "Freedom" Scientific charges for a developer JAWS licence
ghusto 1y ago
> How do you imagine that working? By reading surrounding text or by reading the URL? Yes. If I had "Amaya!" as the link text to download something, I'd be not much better off and would reach for context too. What's the problem with reading the surrounding text or the URL?
- recursive 1y ago
  It's less reliable than the author just telling you what it is. And more expensive too.

donatj 1y ago

What I have learned after years of working with accessibility experts is that screen readers are largely incapable pieces of junk that need to be lead around manually. They don't try to be helpful, they only do exactly what they are told. Frankly I think there's rear space for interruption here, particularly with AI.

snickerdoodle12 1y ago
The hilarious part is that we somehow wound up in a situation where the screen readers are useless pieces of crap but instead of fixing those every developer making a website is held responsible instead.
- rpd9803 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
    I'm embarrassed for the screen reader software for needing so much help.
    - jodrellblank 1y ago
      If you serve your UI as out-of-order HTML content abusing tables for browser layout, if you merge broken fragments of mismatched XHTML from a content management system to cobble a page together on the fly, if you hide items behind burger menus, if you make interactivity from CSS and minified Javascript to visually look like input boxes and buttons instead of using standard buttons, if you add overlays and blocks to stop people selecting or copying text, if you care nothing about tab order and keyboard shortcuts and image alt text, if you reflow text around images, if you name CSS identifiers with no semantic meaning, if you mix in arbitrary advertising and tracking and framework session state, why is a screenreader "a piece of crap" for not being able to magically infer a human interpretation of the page? Why is it embarrassing to need to code against standardised accessibility interfaces so that other tools using those interfaces can function? Is it embarrassing to have to code against a database or filesystem interface to persist data, or a graphics interface to show pictures?

pacifika 1y ago

Why would every client process the context to the link, when the author can do this once and add it to the link, that's much more efficient.

charcircuit 1y ago
Because you can't trust people to do extra work themselves.