RE: Skip Nav Ideas

Greetings all:

With this message, please discontinue the massive cross-posting. 

For the WAI-based discussion, I suggest carrying the conversation on
wai-xtech@w3.org, which is for cross-posting between WAI groups on
technical discussions.

In the meantime, if you want to look at another example of skipnav
implementation, look at the one that's been on the WAI home page for a
while <http://www.w3.org/WAI/> If you have comments on that, please put
comments on wai-xtech@w3.org if for discussion, or at
wai-site-comments@w3.org if you just want to log your comments on it.

Thanks,

- Judy

At 12:19 AM 6/5/01 -0400, gregory j. rosmaita wrote:
>aloha, jim!
>
>your points are well taken, as are kynn's cautions, but i agree that
>whatever tools we have at our disposal to provide access to currently
>inaccessible and less-than-accessible sites, should be used, even if they
>are hacks -- the important considerations are: does this hack that
>benefits user groups x, y, and z also work for groups p and q?  does it
>mask an existing problem or expose a hole?  do authors and developers
>alike know that it is only a hack/kludge and not a solution?  are the
>correct WGs working on the underlying problem, and are developers working
>with/listening to them?
>
>JT: I guess it is not surprising that I like Gregory's technique too,
>except for the problem that screen readers know about visibility:hide and
>so you would have to have style sheets disabled. 
>
>GJR: hmm...  i thought i had used display:none, not visibility:hidden, as
>i know for a fact that JFW 3.7.x (and all earlier COM-DOM aware versions
>of JFW) treat a non-rendered/invisible link as an aural renderer should:
>as a link...  links classed to display:none appear in JFW's links list,
>are accessible via tab navigation, and are treated as any other text
>string in a document when the document is read in full or on-load...  the
>aural equivalent of display:none is speak:none, which is what
>screen-readers should respect -- anything styled with display:none should
>simply be treated as text to which an irrelevant bit of visual styling has
>been applied...
>
>admittedly, the CSS2 section on display seems to imply that display:none
>should apply to all media types, but Section 19 is unambiguous on this
>point:
>
>quote
>'speak'
>[...]
>This property specifies whether aurally and, if so, in what manner
>(somewhat analogous to the 'display' property). The possible values are:
>
>none
>    Suppresses aural rendering so that the element takes no time 
>    to render. Note, however, that descendants may override this
>    value and will be spoken. (To be sure to rendering of an 
>    element and its descendants, use the 'display' property).
>unquote
>source: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html#speaking-props
>
>interestingly, after defining the 2 other values for the 'speak' property
>(normal and spell-out), the CSS2 rec states:
>
>quote
>Note the difference between an element whose 'volume' property has a value
>of 'silent' and an element whose 'speak' property has the value 'none'.
>The former takes up the same time as if it had been spoken, including any
>pause before and after the element, but no sound is generated. The latter
>requires no time and is not rendered (though its descendants may be).
>unquote
>
>which further underscores the point that 'speak' is to aural real estate
>what 'display' is to visual real estate...  volume:silent is, then, the
>aural analog of visibility:hidden
>
>in any event, i've attached a test of screen-readers' ability to speak
>text styled to display:none and to visibility:hidden to this emessage so
>that we can gather further data... the both blocks of "invisible" text and
>both "invisible" links are present in JFW's aural rendering of the page
>(using IE 5.5 SP1)
>
>i've taken the liberty of pointing visitors to the attached invisible
>text test page to send comments to wai-xtech@w3.org (the
>cross-working-group list whose archives live at:
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/
>
>this is precisely the type of thread which wai-xtech was designed to 
>archive, and i wouldn't be surprised if the owners of some of the lists to
>which this thread has been cross-posted begin to ask us to limit further 
>discussions on this topic to wai-xtech
>
>gregory.
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>ACCOUNTABILITY, n.  The mother of caution.
>                     -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>Gregory J. Rosmaita:  oedipus@hicom.net
>Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
>VICUG NYC: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html
>Read 'Em & Speak: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/books/index.html
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>
><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
>    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
>
><head>
><title>Test of Screen-Readers' Ability to Speak Invisible Text</title>
>
><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
>
><meta name="description" content="Test of screen-readers' ability to aurally 
>render text which has not been visually rendered due to the application of 
>CSS2's display:none property/value set." />
>
><meta name="author" content="Gregory J. Rosmaita" />
><meta name="generator" content="Gregory J. Rosmaita" />
>
><style type="text/css">
>body { color:black; background:white; font-family:sans-serif; }
>.explanation { margin:2.5%; border:solid black thin; background:white;
padding:.5em; }
>.hide { display:none }
></style>
>
></head>
>
><body>
>
><a name="backtop" id="backtop"></a>
><h1>Test of Screen-Readers' Ability to Speak Invisible Text</h1>
>
><p class="explanation">
>This page has been constructed in order to gather information about the 
>interaction between screen-readers and text which has not been visually 
>rendered. Visitors to this page are strongly encouraged to provide feedback
>Please be as specific as possible, and be sure to include the name and
version 
>number of the browser and any adaptive/assistive technology you used to
access 
>the content of this page. Please send your comments and observations to 
>&lt;<a href="mailto:wai-xtech@w3.org?subject=Invisible%20Text%20Test" 
>>wai-xtech@w3.org</a>&gt;. Comments will be stored in a <a 
>href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/">public archive</a>.
></p>
>
><p>
>The <code>display:none</code> <acronym title="Cascading Style Sheet"
>>CSS</acronym> property/value set has been applied to the following 
>paragraph, which a <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/conform.html"
>>CSS-conformant user agent</a> should not render to the screen.
></p>
>
><p class="hide">
>This is some text that should be invisible to the naked eye, but audibly 
>and tactilely present. <a href="#backtop">This is an invisible link</a> 
>which will take you back to the top of this page.
></p>
>
><hr noshade="noshade" title="Guilty Party" />
>
><address>constructed by <a
href="mailto:oedipus@hicom.net,unagi69@concentric.net?subject=Invisible%20Te
xt%20Test" 
>>Gregory J. Rosmaita</a> on 4 June 2001; last modified 11:10 <abbr 
>title="post meridian (after noon)" lang="la">PM</abbr> 6/4/2001
></address>
>
><hr title="Validation Information" />
>
><p class="validation">
>
><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" 
>title="Validate this page's XHTML, using the W3C Validator"><img 
>src="http://validator.w3.org/images/vxhtml10" alt="W3C Validated XHTML 1.0!"
>style="border:0;width:88px;height:31px" /></a>
>
>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
>
><a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html" 
>title="Validate this page's stylesheet, using the W3C CSS Validator"
>><img style="border:0;width:88px;height:31px"
>src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss.gif"
>alt="W3C Validated CSS!" /></a>
></p>
>
></body>
></htm
-- 
Judy Brewer    jbrewer@w3.org    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) International Program Office
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:44:48 UTC