| Accessibility and Read More Links in Joomla |
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| Wednesday, 23 January 2008 | |
In one of a series of guest posts here on the Alledia blog, Brian Teeman discusses accessibility and "read more" links on Joomla sites:
Read more and Accessibility Clear and concise hypertext links are key to creating accessible website navigation. Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context - either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse. For example, in HTML, write "Information about version 4.3" instead of "click here". "I have always advised Joomla webmasters to to use a great mambot from Run Digital. It makes the read more link include the title of the article, great for SEO." Once again this shows that taking into consideration the needs of ALL your site visitors, and not excluding those using assistive technologies, has a benefit for all your users and your site in general. More Alledia Guest Blog Posts
Comments (12)
  written by Steve Burge, January 23, 2008
Hi Yannick
Its hard to come up with more suggestions as you work so fast  I'd forgotten that about sh404SEF. Its a useful tip and one that confirms sh404SEF as the best SEO solution for Joomla!  written by Brian Teeman, January 23, 2008
That's great to hear Yannick
Another thing that you should probably consider is a method of offering visual cues to links Research has shown that people with learning disabilities or dyslexia respond better to icons that indicate a purpose. An idea would be to add different icons to all links on the site that indicate if the link is internal, external and even external in a new window. It is generally considered to be bad to open a new window without first informing the user as this can cause issues with many assistive technologies  written by noneck, January 23, 2008
Not sure if this addition was included in the 1.5 SEO Patch or default Stable 1.5, but inside the article manager(Joomla 1.5 Stable Joomla 1.5 SEO Patch), while editing content under Parameters - Advanced, I have an "Alternative Read More Text" Option. I have edited this to be different than the default, however, nothing is being displayed. It might be attributed to my template as well.. I'm hoping this will be included by default in Joomla 1.6.
written by Brian Teeman, January 24, 2008
Yes it is there in advanced paramater option for articles in joomla 1.5. However like you I cant get it to work with the default template.
written by Brian Teeman, January 24, 2008
The paramater does work with the beez template just not with rhuk_milkyway
written by Yannick Gaultier, February 15, 2008
Hi,
Brian, can you confirm if this feature (title added to Read more links) will work only with Beez ? cause I have removed that feature from sh404SEF for J! 1.5, but it looks it will be needed by regular templates ?? As for suggestions, it is indeed feasible. I have already made a "hidden" feature which redirect outbound links, so it can be done. I'll give it a try Regards written by Brian Teeman, February 16, 2008
It will work with any template as long as a template override is present with the correct code in it
written by Yannick Gaultier, February 21, 2008
Hi Brian and all,
I have just uploaded a new version of both sh404sef for J! 1.0.x and 1.5.x, with the requested feature of adding a visual symbol to outbound links. This can be switched off in the backedn, and you can also choose between a white and a black symbol, depending on your site background. In the 1.5.x version, I have also put back the "nsert title in read more links", as I can guess from the discussion above that many templates won't have override and therefore Joomla built in function will not be used by most. In the 1.0.x version, I have added the ability to set a fixed default Itemid per component. So that if a link is missing Itemid, you can be sure it will go to the correct page anyway. You can them at http:://download.siliana.net, in Test versions category Regards written by Brian Teeman, February 22, 2008
Great stuff. I look forward to finding the time to test it. I guess I should install it on my new site
written by Brian Teeman, February 28, 2008
Today a patch was made to the joomla 1.5 tree that enables the advanced readmore functionality in all templates and just Beez so expect to see it in 1.5.2
written by Space Zone, July 20, 2008
hey Brian Teeman
I already installed Joomla 1.5.2 on one of my sites could u tell me where I can find the patch that you talked about in your last comment? Write comment
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Just a reminder : sh404SEF also insert item title in read more link - both in the visible text and as a title attribute of the html link. I am on the lookout for other similar changes that maybe I could implement. Any suggestions ?