Re: Success Criterion 2.4.7. Focus Order

this does not work in public situations and it should not be necessary  
to jump through hurdles to get accessibility needs met.  making the  
link visible does no har to usability and benefits huge numbers of folk.

On Apr 30, 2009, at 10:51 AM, Phill Jenkins wrote:


 > . . . switch users or keyboard only users [which includes the blind  
users btw] often benefit . . .  need to see the links of course. CSS  
techniques can be used to show focused links, but this method makes it  
much more difficult for users to figure out what to do. They need to  
press Tab and suddenly a Skip to link is shown. It is better for  
keyboard users to see the links and build up a strategy on how to use  
the page.

Morten,
good point, I forgot to mention that a profile can (should!) be used  
to set the visibility of the skip links to be shown all the time based  
on user preference settings.  This can work effectively when a user ID  
is used to "log-in" to a portal for example.  The best practice is to  
allow user settings that control the behavior of "hiding" the skip  
links and links to Accessibility help.  Our user studies, usability  
assessments, and user centered design work with both users with  
disabilities (including vision, hearing, reading, cognitive, and  
limited hand use) and users with no declared disability continue to  
confirm the need for "skip to main content" links for some and not to  
force it on others.

Another approach is to consider the capabilities and settings of the  
browsers and assistive technologies - so not to burden all the  
responsibility on the web author.   In other words, should some of  
this "user preferences" be better placed in the end device, browser  
and AT settings?  For example, using headings benefits those with  
browsers or AT that allow them to navigate by headings  And with the  
new specifications in ARIA, perhaps the web author created "skip  to"  
links could be replaced with "main content tags " and could be  
programmatically identified by the browser + AT and then utilized by  
the end user

Regards,
Phill Jenkins,
IBM Research - Human Ability & Accessibility Center

-- 
Jonnie Appleseed
with his
Hands-On Technolog(eye)s
reducing technology's disabilities
one byte at a time

Received on Thursday, 30 April 2009 15:05:21 UTC