Re: Using Heading to Replace Skip Links

On Wed, 09 May 2012 12:11:25 +0200, Vivienne CONWAY <v.conway@ecu.edu.au>  
wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Wow, thanks for all your speedy responses.
>
> Judging from your responses, I'm leaning towards always doing an  
> additional screen reader test for that point if there are no skip  
> links.  I normally always check every page with at least NVDA anyway.   
> If there are no skip links, I'll see if I can use the heading structure  
> to get to the main content.  If so, I think I should assume that it  
> passes 2.4.1.
>
> Does that sound reasonable?

Assuming you are describing your test methodology, rather than letting  
people sell a site as fine for user setups that won't actually work.

cheers

> Regards
>
> Vivienne L. Conway, B.IT(Hons), MACS CT
> PhD Candidate & Sessional Lecturer, Edith Cowan University, Perth, W.A.
> Director, Web Key IT Pty Ltd.
> v.conway@ecu.edu.au
> v.conway@webkeyit.com
> Mob: 0415 383 673
>
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> ________________________________________
> From: Patrick H. Lauke [redux@splintered.co.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2012 5:18 PM
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Using Heading to Replace Skip Links
>
> In which case, if that's how you see it, you can interpret WCAG 2.0's SC
> as only being fulfilled if a page has skip links. That's the beauty of
> WCAG 2.0 ... it's so open to interpretation :)
>
> However, this does open up more interesting discussions: if the
> functionality is available, but only if users have a particular
> browser/extension/AT, is it a pass or a fail? The argument seems to be
> that it should work everywhere, regardless of what software the user
> has. Taking it to extremes, does that mean a site should be usable by a
> visually impaired/blind user when they're not using a screen reader?
> Should we then require sites to be self-voicing? A strawman, admittedly,
> but this goes to the heart of "accessibility supported".
>
> P
>
>
> On 09/05/2012 10:09, Rajiv Shah wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> In plain English, I think that, without browser extensions, user agents  
>> provide no method keyboard method to skp past headings on a page. Skip  
>> links at least aid the keyboard user without the use of any add-ons to  
>> provide this feature. This, of course, helps someone with a mobility  
>> impairment.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rajiv
>>
>>
>> ---- Original message ----
>>> Date: Wed, 09 May 2012 09:57:08 +0100
>>> From: "Patrick H. Lauke"<redux@splintered.co.uk>
>>> Subject: Re: Using Heading to Replace Skip Links
>>> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>>>
>>> On 09/05/2012 09:24, Vivienne CONWAY wrote:
>>>> The reason I ask all of this, is that some of the automated tools  
>>>> pick up the lack of  skip links as failures of 2.4.6. and others  
>>>> don't, especially if there are semantically structured headings (h1  
>>>> etc).
>>>
>>> Automated tools were never reliable, even in WCAG 1.0 times, as
>>> solutions are not binary accessible/not-accessible. This is even more
>>> true for WCAG 2.0 which is driven by SCs that can be achieved in a
>>> variety of known (what's documented in the informative techniques) and
>>> unknown (something that's not documented, but achieves the same end
>>> result for real users) ways.
>>>
>>>> Frankly, I think it should be a requirement as we're wanting to make  
>>>> things better for people to get to the content, not more difficult.   
>>>> However, that probably comes down to usability.
>>>
>>> Then you'd end up having to add qualifiers like "Until user agents..."
>>> to the requirements, and focus explicitly on specific markup constructs
>>> (rather than being technology-agnostic), which are both things that  
>>> WCAG
>>> 2.0 tried very hard to shy away from.
>>>
>>> P
>>> --
>>> Patrick H. Lauke
>>> ______________________________________________________________
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>>> ______________________________________________________________
>>>
>
>
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
> ______________________________________________________________
> re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
> [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
>
> www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
> http://redux.deviantart.com | http://flickr.com/photos/redux/
> ______________________________________________________________
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Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
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Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2012 10:39:43 UTC