Breadcrumbs

Hi Folks,

Jakob Nielsen's latest e-mail included this text:

"For Web designers, this means that the time is over when you had to
discuss whether to use breadcrumbs. The answer is clear now: yes, use
breadcrumbs if your IA lends itself to hierarchical navigation."

Such a timely intervention, as I am about to address this issue with my
students. 

Personally, I view a breadcrumb trail as being, semantically,
hierarchical; which suggests to me that it should be marked up as a
nested list.

However, I find that the RNIB website marks up its breadcrumb trail as
an unordered list where each hypertext element of the breadcrumb trail
uses the following mark-up code:

<li><a href="...">element</a> &gt; </li>

I have also come across websites which do not use a list for their
breadcrumb trail.

I accept that, to a visual user, it matters not how the breadcrumb trail
is marked up; however I would like to know the preferred approach for a
non-visual user.

Also, using CSS, I have attempted to introduce some text in order to
make the semantic nature of the breadcrumb trail apparent to an 'aural'
user. Alas, I have had no success with IBM's Home Page Reader, nor with
my version of JAWS.

I have had success in obtaining my required 'equivalent breadcrumb
trail' when I have used the same CSS and applied it to the printer.

Is the LINK element's media="aural" currently supported by any assistive
technology?

Cheers,
Dave
David Eadie
Lecturer
Decision Analysis & Risk
Caledonian Business School
Glasgow Caledonian University
Tel: 0141-331-8775
Fax: 0141-331-3199
email: d.eadie@gcal.ac.uk