RE: Placing generic navigation links

> Paul Adelson said:
> 
> > Is there any consensus on the following, or has anyone had
> experience or
> > done usability studies to determine which is better for accessible
> web
> > design:
> > 
> > For a site that has a standard set of links on every page (e.g. Home
> |
> > Products | Employment | Contacts), is it better for accessibility to
> > have those linkes at the top of every page or at the bottom?
> 
> 
Here's my two cents on this.
This seems more of a style issue than an accessibility issue.  You are
going to get different answers from blind users because different screen
readers handle it differently.  Some parse the document by page or
screen and others do not.  Most screen reader/browser combinations let
you navigate the text one way and through links another way.  So it
depends on what the user is doing-- reading text or hunting for links.
If they are navigating links, they are usually not aware of the
surrounding text so whether the navigation links are at the top or at
the bottom is irrelavant.  If they are reading text and encounter a
bunch of navigation links, their reaction may be partially affected by
the verbosity of the screen reader which will determine how quickly they
can get through them.  Personally, I like navigation links at the very
top or very bottom of the document and not on every page, but as long as
they are all on a single line or 2 I don't really care because I can
just ARROW down to go past them.

Joe Roeder
Access Technology Specialist
National Industries for the Blind
E-mail:  jroeder@nib.org
Voice:  (703) 578-6524
FAX: 	(703) 998-4217


> ----------
> From: 	Al Gilman[SMTP:asgilman@access.digex.net]
> Sent: 	Wednesday, July 15, 1998 1:51 PM
> To: 	paul.adelson@citicorp.com
> Cc: 	w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: 	Re: Placing generic navigation links
>

Received on Thursday, 16 July 1998 10:10:33 UTC