RE: Button research discussion

Dear Group,
there seems to be discussion of 'next' and 'previous' buttons in this thread. An piece of advice, which seems to go way back is "Don't break the back button" [on the Browser]. There seem to be, in existence, sites which adhere to this, and it is found that they are superior in terms of accessibility . Made terse, an 'previous' button may be superfluous, or if used, might simply invoke a JavaScript handler to return to the previous page?
Lee.
 
> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 09:07:18 -0500
> From: shawn@w3.org
> To: w3c-wai-eo@w3.org
> CC: w.fiers@accessibility.nl
> Subject: Re: Button research discussion
> 
> On 8/26/2014 5:00 PM, Anna Belle Leiserson wrote:
> > Following up on Sharron's email to a different EO list (linked here:
> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-eo-editors/2014Aug/att-0003/00-part),
> > I've been wading through the same set of articles. It's all so murky.
> > (BTW, this is in re. where to put next/previous buttons on the WCAG
> > EM Report Tool http://w3c.github.io/wcag-em-report-tool/dist/#/).
> >
> > I agree with Sharron's logic.  And then using my gut and thinking
> > about a few big, popular commercial sites, I take it one step
> > further.... I wonder if the clearest thing might be having *only* a
> > Next button -- and align it on the left?  (In other words, axe the
> > Previous button.)
> >
> > If it's important to have easy access to previous step(s) on longer
> > pages, right beneath the solo Next button the top progress bar could
> > be replicated.
> 
> .oO good idea. What about having only the progress bar (not a Next button)? It might not be very pretty, but it seems *very much to support usability*. :-) Maybe even tweak the design down there to make the next step look even more clickable?
> 
> ~Shawn
>