Forum Moderators: open
Here's the scenario:
There's a list of items. Each has a headline, some descriptive text and a call to action link. Example below:
Headline
This is the description
View more details >
Now, instead of just the "View more details >" (which has its own set of usability/accessibility problems?) as a hyperlink, the headline and the description text are also hyperlinked. All to the same location
What issues, if present, are there? Also, what about having more than five of these items with everything linked?
Any sources that I could cite?
Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.
I find a great deal of accessibility and usability is just plain common sense, starting with "Would I use it? I mean, really use it?"
That will get you 90% of the way there.
In this case, I'd either hotlink only the "More Details" link (using a decent "title" attribute text), or eschew the "More Details" link and hotlink the title.
Many sites do support the whole thing, but in more of a "clickable image" type of thing, like ads. I'm not a big fan of this, because I think links should look like links.
Links are inherently less readable than plain text. A link should stand out (I use underlines whenever possible, often to sneering remarks of "visually primitive.") Text that stands out is often not so readable, so you don't want people straining to read the information they need to decide whether or not to click.
Just my $0.02.
Headline
This is the description
View more details >
presented/coded on the page?
I have had a 'similar' issue with a site I built a couple of months ago and I did the following - not sure if it's recommended but anyway:
<div id="mydiv">
Headline
This is the description
View more details <span> about the headline product</span> >
</div>
And then I
Are you linking to one thing, or two things? If you are only linking to the full article, I would think it's more clear to make the headline linkable, but not the partial body.
This looks like the typical CMS scenario today. Actually, I hate teasers where you have to click on a link to read the whole story. But it's a currently-popular style.
You might try using something like [...] as a link instead of "click to read more". Or you might explain in one place that users can click on headlines to see the full stories.
Users will PROBABLY get it if you make the headline clickable, and end the summary with "..." (clickable or not).
Finally, "more" is pretty unobtrusive, and gets right to the point.
To clarify the presentation (which are lists of special offers), the headline is larger in size and colored, the body text is in gray and default font-size and the "view more details >" is set to our hyperlink color.
It was told to me that it was best practice to "link it all". I've seen headlines and call to action links hyperlinked but never saw body text hyperlinked unless it was a graphic/banner ad like cmarshall mentioned. It concerned me if there would be any accessibility or usability issues if we did this because basically the entire page is just filled with these items and that'd make everything on the page hyperlinked.
... screenreaders often offer a function to read out just a list of links on the page rather than the whole page text. This provides a useful shortcut for users trying to navigate through the site quickly.
So what you describe would defeat the purpose of the above functionality. It only affects screenreaders, but you did ask about accessibility. :)
