Quote:
Originally Posted by linnetwoods
One thing that drives me mad is when I am reading an article and click on a link within it only to find that, instead of opening in a new window, it has carted me away from the article altogether by opening in the same page, when what I had in mind was to finish the article first and then check out the page which had had time to load in the background!
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I can agree with most of your post but this part shows how difficult it is to suit all visitors and why part of the answer to "accessibility" is for users to adapt their own PCs & web-browsers.
Years ago, I used to follow the (then popular) advice that all external links should open in a new window - so that you retained the visitor on your web-site when they'd finished reading and had closed the new window.
Unfortunately, opening a new window (or tab, or pop-up) without warning is very confusing for anyone who is using a text-to-speech screen reader. It also "breaks" the web-browser's "back" button.
These days, my web-browsers are configured to open "new windows" as new tabs rather than as new windows.
However with some web-sites, I've sometimes clicked repeatedly on a link because nothing seemed to happen - only to notice later that several new tabs had opened.
If a web-site is aimed at a specific target audience, there
may be some justification for diverging from normal conventions.
But, (almost) all web-pages should be designed so that the visitor's web-browser (& accessibility software) can easily convert them into a form which suits the visitor.
Richard