Jaws supports title but only if you tell it to
My understanding is that the default behavior is that Jaw will vocalize which ever is longer, actual link text or the contents of the title attribute. This is reasonable behavior.
its configuration for that is not exactly pretty.
Agreed, but fortunately most end-users will not have to mess with this.
branders will need to understand
Web developers need to code to the HTML standards. The developers of user agents need to support common and well documented HTML features. Expecting web developers to be aware of, let alone code to account for, poor behavior of assistive technology is, in a word, stupid.
