Inline linking is the practice of incorporating hyperlinks into text passages within the main body of your website. Generally, this is a technique for providing contextual explanations or additional information as an immediately accessible resource for site visitors. I recently read two articles concerning this subject – the first, at Wolf-Howl questions the practice of inline linking as being bad for usability. The second, by Bill Slawski, discusses Graywolf’s ideas.

Both articles make a number of valid points – but I feel that the overall question is a matter of preference. Personally, I find the presence of links within a contextual body to be extremely valuable. For context, there’s nothing to beat it. Graywolf suggests that lists of links following the text are less disruptive to the flow of reading. This may be true, in certain circumstances. I certainly agree that it helps in the specific example he provides. However, it seems to me that what he suggests only works for short, tightly focused texts.

In his example, a single paragraph is followed by four helpful links. Given this density of contextual links and the length of the content, this is clearly useful. However, provided with a document which is significantly longer – a 1500 word article, for example, this technique would be rather clumsy. Either you would end up with a block of links every couple of paragraphs, which I feel would disrupt my reading quite significantly, or you have a lengthy set of links at the foot of the document – which may provide insufficient context to be clear on the referenced point.

I have to think about this from an accessibility standpoint, as well. If the links are provided only at the end of the article, a user with a screen reader has a significant amount of ground to cover before they can reach any further information. With contextual links, the user can decide right away if they’re interested in additional information. Either way, they can use keyboard navigation to quickly skip from link to link – but with links only available in the footer, it’s may be very difficult to quickly identify the context of the link.

I also mentioned the post by Bill Slawski. One talent that Bill has is the ability to aggregate a huge number of relevant sources on a subject very quickly. Bill points out several references I thought were very apropos, including information from Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru, the psychology department at Wichita State University, and others.

Bill doesn’t come down firmly on one side or the other – which I think is very fair. There are advantages and disadvantages every way you cut it for linking — either they’re disruptive or they’re convenient. They’re collected for easy reference or they’re separated for their immediate context. It’s always a choice you need to make — link to the most important references within your text, and leave a collection of additional links at the end of the article may be the best choice.

And always provide well structured internal navigation!

 Tags:

• accessible web design
• usability
• inline linking

SiteMorse, for those of you who may not know, is a high-profile accessibility testing company based in the United Kingdom. They are well-known for the practice of releasing their "Rankings League Tables," which list the tested accessibility of government, banking, and other websites each month.

Their particularly product is entirely automated – and has, therefore, been attacked quite heavily in the world of accessibility auditors and consultants.

At the moment, there is a very interesting conversation going on at
Accessify Forum which is primarily a question and answer session between Grant Broome, a well-reputed accessibility consultant working with CDSM Interactive Solutions and Jon Ribbens, a director of the company which develops the SiteMorse product.

I will disclose, to start, the fact that I was already in the anti-SiteMorse camp before reading this interview. However, to date the Q & A session has done little to change my views. It’s my feeling that Jon has done little but attempt to avoid Grant’s question. With repeated accusations about vagueness and the irrelevance of Grant’s questions and points, Jon has done little to impress me with his company’s dedication to accessibility issues.

The core issue is whether automated testing can possibly fully address the accessibility of a website. I and many other accessibility consultants believe, quite strongly, that it’s simply not possible to judge a website entirely based on automated judgements. An automated tool can be helpful for resolving specific issues – but should NEVER be substituted for a human appraisal of accessibility.

Regardless, this conversation has already been quite interesting, and is worth following.

 Tags:

• sitemorse
• accessibility testing
• automated testing
• web standards

I’ve been giving some thought lately to the subject of web semantics. In short, web semantics are the application of structural meaning using HTML markup. For a more palatable explanation of web semantics and their benefits for your website, I’ve written a new little article – Web Semantics and HTML Structure.

Happy New Year! In the past month, I’ve spent most of my time being socially active, with my mother visiting me from the US, but have still managed to spend a good chunk of time learning.

Amongst the things I’ve learned in the past week is good deal of valuable information concerning Accesskeys – for a brief overview, Accesskeys are a method to provide web users with a keyboard shortcut to visit pages within a website. They are a strongly encourage part of most guidelines towards web accessibility – but there are some strong opponents to this thought. This has prompted me to write up a new article – Accesskeys – Curse or Blessing?