RE: Skipping Links

Kynn,

IBM Home Page Reader picks up the link (of course) "Accessible Web Design
Course" but doesn't read the title of that link.

Since that link skips the navigation I think there is no question that it
satisfies the Skip Navigation standard for 508 - a method is provided. How
does anyone know that that is what the link does?

I know some say "titles" on links are useful (IE displays them as pop-up
text) but I am "shocked" to find that JFW reads the title and not the link
text. By the way, JFW 3.7 does not read a skip navigating link assigned to a
small image (as on CNN and IBM and ...); a situation that is going to be
corrected by Freedom Scientific with a patch shortly.

Window Eyes, Like HPR reads the link text - as I think it should. I believe
it is mistake to rely on the title to carry crucial information. The ONLY
way this can be useful is for title text to always be read, and though it
seems JFW is doing that, I wouldn't recommend it to IBM for HPR. How can we
tell web developers to write in the title where the link really goes? What
should the link text say? Why not use "course content" as the link text in
your case? In fact, why note use "skip navigation?" I know the answer to
that!

Jim
jim@jimthatcher.com
Accessibility Consulting
http://jimthatcher.com
512-306-0931

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Kynn Bartlett
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 11:32 AM
To: Marti; Patrick Burke; ADAM GUASCH-MELENDEZ; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org; David
Poehlman
Subject: Re: Skipping Links


Thanks, Marti!

At 09:38 AM 2/16/2001, Marti wrote:
>With JFW 3.5 I was not able to identify the "this page" link, it could be
my
>settings but the 'title' part about skip navigation was not read and it
>wasn't clear that Accessible Web Design as a link would give you a 'skip
>navigation' action.
>Using pwWebspeak the skip navigation title was clear and worked well.

Hmm, okay, we have one positive data point (from software which, sadly,
is discontinued) and one negative data point.  If anyone is using any
other assistive tech, let me know -- can someone with JAWS 3.7 test it,
or IBM's Home Page Reader?

Although, with that negative point for JFW 3.5, it's looking like I'll
have a trip back to the drawing board soon...

--Kynn

PS:  This would all be easy to do if I'd just convince myself that
      Idyll Mountain can afford to license Reef's edapta technology,
      but unfortunately we're not -that- rich yet. ;)


--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Customer Management/Edapta
Reef North America
Tel +1 949-567-7006
________________________________________
ACCESSIBILITY IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
________________________________________
http://www.reef.com

Received on Friday, 16 February 2001 13:23:24 UTC