Re: Skip links ARE a markup problem (was RE: Skip links should be a markup problem)

On 4/27/05, Patrick Lauke <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk> wrote:

> Again, maybe I'm being too idealistic, but the situation *is* slowly changing,
> as more and more large sites are cleaning up their act...but we've still got
> a long way to go.

I don't think that link is being as widely ignored as one may suspect,
and I agree with you  that the situation is shifting.  While browsers
don't necessarily support the link element natively, search engines
such as Google do.  (As well as support for the younger sibling of
link, the "rel" attribute of the anchor element).  Peaks under the
hood of many major sites now reveal link is alive and well, and and as
you said, it's popularity is slowly growing.

And to bring us back on topic, even IF there's not native support for
link, that support can be easily added to the major browsers, and I
imagine that it would be relatively easy to incorporate link support
into screenreaders and other assistive technologies by their
manufacturers.  We have before us a technique to define the logical
relationships of the chunks of our documents (i.e., a way to solve the
skip link problem via HTML).  Even if there is currently not wholesale
support for the solution, does that mean we should not implement it
anyway?  Support for abbr and acronym are shabby at best, yet I still
use them and try to be forward thinking in my code.

As I said before, ideas bubble to the surface all the time.  Those
that are good stick around.  I see this one as having the potential to
have good legs...if we can get enough web developers out there
convinced that they should use it.

-- 
Bryce Fields, Webmaster
Where I Work: Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
Where I Play: www.royalrodent.com

"Do or do not! There is no try!" -- Yoda

Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2005 12:39:39 UTC