Comments on: Semantically Correct Knockout Quotes

By: nerkalog » Blog Archive » The Modern Sidebar

nerkalog » Blog Archive » The Modern Sidebar — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:29:49 +0000

[...] I suspect a similar problem is cropping up for JAWS users with the Semantically Correct Knockout Quotes technique I posted, so I’ll have to re-visit that at some point. [...]

By: Stuart Robertson

Stuart Robertson — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:00:54 +0000

Here's another approach using CSS and the :before pseudo-element to generate the content of the quote: CSS Pull Quotes

By: nerkles

nerkles — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:26:51 +0000

In case anybody cares, I'm working on a version of this that uses MochiKit instead of xlib. I'll post it when ready.

By: Aankhen

Aankhen — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 15:46:04 +0000

Ah, I see. No harm done. Some notification would be appreciated, though.

By: nerkles

nerkles — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 07:29:23 +0000

Sorry about the troubles with the comment form. I had to put in that code thingy because I was just buried in comment spam, every few days I’d get blasted with about 200 of them. But even if you get past that, certain words will still land you in the moderation queue.

By: Aankhen

Aankhen — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 17:55:14 +0000

What the heck? It swallowed up my comment. :-S

P.S. -- A preview feature would be really useful.

By: Aankhen

Aankhen — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 17:54:07 +0000

ARGH! This is the third time I'm writing out the full comment, because of that authorisation code... the first time, I forgot to fill it out; the second time, it seems that the image was cached, so I had the wrong authorisation code. Right, I'll try it one last time.

Assuming screenreaders do read the title to the user, then if a screenreader botches the script that tries to remove the title attribute, it’s going to fail badly. If it’s in a meta tag, at least we know it’s not going to cause a weird experience for screenreader users.

But wouldn't a screenreader start reading only after the browser renders the full page? I'm not an expert on screenreaders, so this is just a stupid assumption.

Also, knockout quotes (at least the way this technique handles them) are an “off to the side” kind of content, so it makes semantic sense to put the attribution for them in a meta tag.

Now there's a good point which I hadn't considered. Ah, what can I say? I'm just a sucker for titles.

Also, I’ll look for Simon’s script, it sounds interesting.

Take a look at Dunstan Orchard's modified version of Simon's script.

By: nerkles

nerkles — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 05:50:41 +0000

Aankhen,

Assuming screenreaders do read the title to the user, then if a screenreader botches the script that tries to remove the title attribute, it's going to fail badly. If it's in a meta tag, at least we know it's not going to cause a weird experience for screenreader users. Also, knockout quotes (at least the way this technique handles them) are an "off to the side" kind of content, so it makes semantic sense to put the attribution for them in a meta tag.

OK, that's getting too deep into semantics for this late hour. I'm going to give it some more thought when I'm awake. Also, I'll look for Simon's script, it sounds interesting.

Thanks again for your thoughts on this.

By: Aankhen

Aankhen — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 13:39:58 +0000

You're right, I believe a screenreader might read out the title attribute. However, one thing you could is to remove the title attribute in the script, so that any screenreader which works on top of a JavaScript-enabled browser won't exhibit bizzare behaviour.

Or is that just too hacky? I dunno, that's the way Simon Willison's blockquotes script works.

By: nerkles

nerkles — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 18:33:58 +0000

@Aankhen: That’s an interesting idea. My only hesitation is that I don’t know what non-visual browers like JAWS would do with that title attribute (I suspect it would read it to the user and it would sound like a bizarre typo). Anybody out there know?