Re: [techs] Skip navigation techniques

Jim Thatcher wrote:

>1. Skip Navigation Link 
>
>The link should be at or very near the top of the page; it is a link with a
>local target just before the beginning of the main content.
>
><!-- at or very near the top of the page -->
><a href="#main">Skip Navigation</a>
><!-- many navigation links -->
><a name="main" id="main"></a>
><!-- beginning of main content -->
>

Just a proposal. Observing many blind user navigating in web page, I 
noted that in some cases they don't use the haders to navigate (it 
depends on the skill in using screen reader, which cannot be assumed), 
and sometimes they use the very same typical navigation strategy: skip 
to content, listen to the content, examinate the contextual links at the 
beginning and choosing one of them. In other words, they often are 
unaware even of the mere existence of navigation section, if they are 
below the content. If there are many section in the page (secondary 
contents, two or three link sectione, search, login, newsletter 
subscriptions, etc) , they will never notice them, even if they navigate 
a lot in the site.

To avoid this "structural blindess" may be useful a paragraph such this 
at the very begin of the body part of the document:

<p>Skip to: <a href="#content">Main content</a> | <a 
href="#search">Search Box</a> | <a href="#nav1">Global navigation</a> | 
<a href="#nav2">local navigation</a>...</p>

This also require the <title> tag content to be significant: they 
understand "where they are" from that title, before the <h1> tag.

I agree on the other proposals of jim, especially on the css method of 
hiding by position: absolute; left: -10000... Visibility and display 
should be avoided until user agent will not be able to render them 
properly according to media specification. At the moment it is not 
always the case.

Bye

Maurizio Boscarol
http://www.usabile.it/

Received on Thursday, 17 June 2004 08:05:36 UTC