Category archive links include description in a title attribute by default

[just0nequestion]

As aria should help people that need assistive technology, having them to listen to a whole heap of crumbled words that come from a html structured category description isn't what this was intendend for.

<li class="cat-item cat-item-1 current-cat"><a aria-current="page" href="https://www.blog.com" title="Here comes everything from the category description with stipped html tags which results in a lot of words that don't give the user of assistive technology a benefit. It even disturbs him (when categories have long / formatted descriptions. The words here show up without formatting and created duplicate content on page">*</a>

[sabernhardt]

Thanks for the report!

WordPress has removed many title attributes, but the ​wp_list_categories function still has use_desc_for_title true (1) by default. I don't think this should be the expected default.

[joyously]

Is it the aria or the title that is the problem?

[just0nequestion]

The problem is within the <a title="">

Thank you for taking notice!

[andrija]

Hello @sabernhardt, I'd like to tackle this as my first bug.

Can you help me brainstorm the best solution, please?

Currently, the default value of use_desc_for_title is 1.
If I set it to 0, then the HTML <a> tag will have no title attribute at all.

• Should we remove that default arg, then we'll never have the <a> title attribute
• Should we change the behavior of \src\wp-includes\class-walker-category.php:125 to simply use $category->name if use_desc_for_title is 1, but that simply sounds wrong
• Should we add an } else { there so we always have the title attribute in the <a> tag, with the $category->description if use_desc_for_title is 1 and $category->name if use_desc_for_title is 0

I guess the last solution would work, what do you think?

[andrija]

Default use_desc_for_title set to false (0), category walker will always create <a title=""> attribute with category name (default) or category description if use_desc_for_title is set to true (1)

[andrija]

Replaced spaces with tabs

[sabernhardt]

Thanks for the patch!

I could have linked to #24766 to explain why many title attributes have been removed. Plus, the category name is already used in the link text, so adding the same in a title attribute would be redundant.

[andrija]

This diff only changes the default value of use_desc_for_title to false (0)

[andrija]

Ok, thank you for the additional information.

The latest diff changes the default value to false (0) which means no title attribute.

If someone needs the title they can change the $args value to true (1) and if they need to manipulate it there's a filter in the category Walker.

I guess this was the shortest possible diff .)

[sabernhardt]

I guess this was the shortest possible diff

Almost :) The docblock needs updating as well (it says "Default 1.")

[andrija]

Default use_desc_for_title set to false (0)

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/55530

[audrasjb]

Thanks for the patch!
I added a PR to make sure it passes Core unit tests.
Self assigning for final review/commit.

[audrasjb]

All checks have passed. Looks good to me.

[audrasjb]

In 53392:

Taxonomy: Set use_desc_for_title to false by default in wp_list_categories()

This change removes the default title attribute of category links returned by wp_list_categories(), for better accessibility.

Props just0nequestion, joyously, andrija, audrasjb, sabernhardt.
Fixes #55530.
See #24766.

committed in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/53392