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Opened 4 weeks ago

Last modified 13 days ago

#62835 accepted defect (bug)

Remove title attributes from author link functions

Reported by: sabernhardt's profile sabernhardt Owned by: joedolson's profile joedolson
Milestone: 6.8 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Users Keywords: title-attribute has-patch has-unit-tests
Focuses: accessibility Cc:

Description

Related: #24766 and #26559

#26559 retained some title attributes because the "Posts by author" and "Visit author's website" tooltips still had a small additional value for anyone who could access them. (The important information was already in the visible link text.)

Discussion on #24766 started to reconsider either removing the title attributes or changing them.

@audrasjb:

Shouldn't we just replace the title attribute with aria-label?

@joedolson:

This should also consider a text order change. For screen reader users, the unique information should go first: 'website: author', 'posts: author'; but for voice command, the visible information should go first: 'author: website', 'author: posts'.

@alh0319 suggested removing the attributes in a spreadsheet, and @adnanlimdi had made a patch like that.

More than 70 themes in the directory use at least two of the three functions. The output might require some distinction between the author's website link (get_the_author_link()) and the author's post archives page (get_the_author_posts_link() and wp_list_authors()).

Alternatively, functions could add a parameter that defaults to the current title but allows removing it.

Change History (8)

This ticket was mentioned in PR #8156 on WordPress/wordpress-develop by @sabernhardt.


4 weeks ago
#1

  • Keywords has-patch has-unit-tests added

Option 1: Remove title attributes, and update unit tests.

Props adnanlimdi

Trac 62835

#2 @joedolson
4 weeks ago

I still think that we need to be able to differentiate between the two different links; otherwise we're making an existing accessibility issue worse, by having links to two different resources with the same text.

This ticket was mentioned in PR #8182 on WordPress/wordpress-develop by @sabernhardt.


4 weeks ago
#3

Option 2:

  • Removes 'Posts by %s' title attributes from get_the_author_posts_link(), the_author_posts_link() and wp_list_authors().
  • Creates a new $use_title_attr parameter for website links in get_the_author_link() and the_author_link().

By default, this would keep a distinction between links from get_the_author_link() functions and the post archive links, if they are on the same page.

Like option 1, it would also remove Core's 'Posts by %s' string, which at least 18 plugins and one recently unlisted theme have used.

Trac 62835

This ticket was mentioned in PR #8183 on WordPress/wordpress-develop by @sabernhardt.


4 weeks ago
#4

Option 3:
Creates a new $use_title_attr argument for each of the author link functions.

By default, this should not change the output of these functions.

Trac 62835

@sabernhardt commented on PR #8183:


4 weeks ago
#5

The function the_author_posts_link() deprecated an `$idmode` parameter. If that parameter needs to remain deprecated and unused, I could undo the changes to that function in this PR. Then anyone who wants to remove the title attribute would use
echo get_the_author_posts_link( false );

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #accessibility by joedolson. View the logs.


13 days ago

#7 @joedolson
13 days ago

  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to 6.8
  • Owner set to joedolson
  • Status changed from new to accepted

#8 @audrasjb
13 days ago

Personally, I'd go with Option 2 (PR 8182). Option 3 (PR 8183) looks way overkill to me :)

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