Ah, thanks Godmar and Thomas. The empty span is probably the key. I 
don't always use empty spans for COinS. For instance, the Code4Lib 
Journal, we put a link inside the span that takes you to a page that 
says "If you had LibX installed, you'd get useful functionality here 
instead of this link." Which seemed like a nice idea, but perhaps not 
worth the trade-offs.

Perhaps empty spans, with CSS setting display:none, should be 
recommended best practice for COinS, and should take care of most 
accessibility concerns. I believe most screen readers succesfully do NOT 
read elements with display:none.

Jonathan

Godmar Back wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 2:31 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>   
>> Not that I know of.
>>
>> You can say display:none, but that'll probably hide it from LibX etc too.
>>     
>
> No, why would it.
>
> BTW, I don't see why screen readers would stumble over this when the
> child of the <span> is empty. Do they try to read empty text?  And if
> a COinS is processed, we fix up the title so tooltips show nicely.
>
>  - Godmar
>
>   
>> What is needed is a CSS @media for screen readers, like one exists for
>> 'print'. So you could have a seperate stylesheet for screenreaders, like you
>> can have a seperate stylesheet for print. That would be the right way to do
>> it.
>>
>> But doesn't exist.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> Thomas Dowling wrote:
>>     
>>> On 12/04/2008 02:02 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Yeah, I had recently noticed indepedently, been unhappy with the way a
>>>> COinS "title" shows up in mouse-overs, and is reccommended to be used by
>>>> screen readers. Oops.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> By any chance, do current screen readers honor something like '<span
>>> class="Z3988" style="speak:none" title=...>'?
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> --
>> Jonathan Rochkind
>> Digital Services Software Engineer
>> The Sheridan Libraries
>> Johns Hopkins University
>> 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu
>>
>>     
>
>   

-- 
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu