Should we omit title attributes from xref macro output?

[exe-boss]

@chrisdavidmills

But I can understand the convenience factor; does it outweigh the a11y problems?

I don’t think so, and I believe that the xRef case is providing auxiliary descriptions.

@wbamberg

Hence the question: if it’s a bad enough thing that we don’t want to do it for the short descriptionse expose in mdn/data, should we still do it for MDN itself?

The linked article doesn’t say that the title attribute is always bad for accessibility, but that you should consider providing an accessible alternative if you decide to use them and to avoid using them for primary labels.

In the xRef case, the primary label is the textContent of the <a>nchor link, and the title attribute provides an auxiliary description, which is copied from the first paragraph or the article’s seoSummary.