Self-Referential Links: Controversy Rumbles On
One of the biggest things that my recent trip to the “Government websites 2.0: the next generation!” conference left me with was a question. Two questions actually. The first being “was that exclamation mark at the end of the title really necessary?”.
Chris Rourke of User Vision suggested that you shouldn’t use self-referential links as these will cause confusion. This has also been suggested in the past by Derek Powerzek and by Jakob Nielsen and yet, unless I’m missing something, neither of them have provided any statistics to show which users it is confusing, or in what proportion.. It has also been discussed in great length on AccessifyForum on a number of occassions, with my personal beliefs siding with Mr Jay, when he compares a self-referential link to trying to select the existing channel on a TV remote control:
My TV has a little LED that flashes to provide a sort of feedback mechanism when you press buttons on the remote. Changing channels from BBC2 to BBC2 is pointless, yet the little LED flashes away anyway. But at least I know that it’s me being a plonker by pressing the wrong button. If I pressed buttons and the TV decided on my behalf that I was a plonker and didn’t bother flashing its little LED I’d panick and assume something was broken.Mr Jay
This seems to be one of those areas where there’s a lot of opinion, but I’m not aware of much evidence. I’m not saying there isn’t any, merely that I’m not aware of it. From my conversations with Grant Broome of CDSM, I am aware that the Shaw Trust has carried out 24 pan-disability accessibility audits on websites to date, using testers who may be blind, partially sighted, mobility impaired, deaf, or cognitively impaired, and in none of those 24 audits has anyone even so much as raised self-referential links being an issue.
Of course, absence of evidence isn’t the same thing as evidence of absence, and so this doesn’t prove that it doesn’t cause anyone any problems. All it proves it that either it wasn’t a problem to the testers involved in those audits, or for some reason they didn’t mention it and it didn’t show up in the test results. It does seem however suggestive that we shouldn’t continue to swallow the line about self-referential links being bad unless someone’s actually prepared to come up with some hard research and give us the numbers…
AlastairC says:
August 21st, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Hi Jack,
Does the Shaw trust observe people during the sessions or are the results self reported?
I’ve seen it cause problems (as I mentioned on accessify), where (non-disabled) people have repeatedly clicked the self-referential links, and it is worse for people using screen magnifiers.
Not linking to the current page is a navigational indicator in itself, and with styling, quite a strong and functional indicator.
Grant Broome says:
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:19 am
At Shaw Trust the testing method is quite different from that at Nomensa.
We don’t believe that accessibilty and usability are the same thing.
To be able to accredit a website, we want to be sure that issues that are recorded are due to the innaccessibilty of the site and not because the tester doesn’t know how to use their software properly. This is why we choose to work regularly with a core team with a broad spectrum of disabilities. We feel that this method has many advantages over a method where the level of expertise of the user and his/her assistive technology is unknown.
From your comment I would summise that the issue you have observed is not because the page is self referential, but that it is not clear to the user which page they are currently on or that the link that they are trying to activate is the current page. I do not accept that the best way to indicate the current page is to remove the self-link. It is the styling of the link that is the important factor and there are many other more effective ways of offering strong indicators of the current page in the menu system.
AlastairC says:
October 12th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Hmm, lots of stuff to comment on there:
“We don’t believe that accessibility and usability are the same thing.”
Without getting into semantics, I would suggest that accessibility is a particular niche of usability, which is fairly clear from the standard definition of usability. The main difference is that accessibility is mandated with legal requirements.
“we want to be sure that issues that are recorded are due to the inaccessibility of the site and not because the tester doesn’t know how to use their software properly.” as any experienced facilitator will be able to do.
“we choose to work regularly with a core team with a broad spectrum of disabilities.” See:
http://alastairc.ac/2006/07/expert-usability-participants/
“a method where the level of expertise of the user and his/her assistive technology is unknown.” These aspects are known, checked and accounted for.
It is unlikely that you would notice self-referential links as an issue without observing typical users.
“It is the styling of the link that is the important factor and there are many other more effective ways of offering strong indicators of the current page in the menu system.”
How would that styling be apparent to someone using a screen reader? Also, when using a screen magnifier and the link is not near any page information headings, as is often the case.
What better way is there to indicate that it is the current page than with styling and structure?