- From: david poehlman <david.poehlman@handsontechnologeyes.com>
- Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 10:17:04 -0500
- To: "ADAM GUASCH" <ADAM.GUASCH@EEOC.GOV>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
I think my table of contents example has been a bit over drawn. I agree with almost everything written ere but there is one ting left out. or maybe two. If people want to use css to make te pages more workable by signted users, they can do tat and still ave wat nav is needed depending of course on what is being served up. What we have to be concerned with is accessibility. Getting something out of the way for the convenience of someone is not accessibility. I agree we don't want it to be a sore thumb, but the "skip..." link tells me that the poor blind need a bit of elp so this is our way of giving it to them. I'd prefer hide nav bar or link to main content or something tat blends in wit te scenery? Johnnie Apple Seed ----- Original Message ----- From: "ADAM GUASCH" <ADAM.GUASCH@EEOC.GOV> To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 9:15 AM Subject: Re: Copywriting for Screenreaders (was Alt text for URL's) >>>> "david poehlman" <david.poehlman@handsontechnologeyes.com> 2/15/2005 8:20:03 AM >>> > >Ok, I'll put it succinctly. If site navigation is so bad that it needs to >be skipped, It's not a question of bad. It's a question of should the user have to go through it each time he/she accesses a page. Clearly, nobody believes the answer is yes. Everybody wants to find a solution for the user to easily get to the section of the page - navigation, content, or subsection of content - that he/she is looking for. Most people here seem to favor skip links. You suggested earlier using a table of contents approach. There's really little difference, except that with the skip link approach it's one link, to one section of a page, and in the table of contents approach it's many links, to many sections of a page - what you seem to be advocating as good site structure. But is that really good site structure? If you need to use a screen reader, yes, a table of contents approach is great. It allows you to naivgate through a page and find what you need, quickly, efficiently, and easily. The problem is, for a visual user, without motor impairments, a table of contents may be a lousy approach. If a page is designed with multiple elements, visually arranged so that the entire structure can be easily seen and understood, with minimal, perhaps no, scrolling necessary, what, to the average user, would be the point of a table of contents? It would provide little to no benefit to navigation or understanding of site structure. It would be one more visual element to be understood, so that it can be used or ignored. There would be some confusion as to why there's a list of links to something that's right on the same page, visible on the same screen at the same time. It would use screen "real estate" unnecessarily, and compromise the design of the page. Here's an example. Go to http://www.cnn.com/ There's a great deal of content on that page. I've used it with a screen reader, and it's a royal pain in the butt to use. I've tried it with Lynx, and it's similarly bad. Clearly, a table of contents would be of significant benefit, and would make the site much easier to use. However, my vision and mobility are unimpaired. I can use Firefox or Internet Explorer or another visual browser. I can see the visual layout of the site. Although it's far from perfect, it's actually pretty easy to use, relatively well laid-out, with a straight-forward, easily understandable structure. Navigation within the page is easy. As a sighted user, a table of contents, containing half a dozen or more elements, would not help at all, would look out of place, would introduce an element of confusion and clutter, and would generally be a bad thing. That's why even the simple skip link is usually made invisible, to get it out of the way of sighted users. That's a bad idea for several reasons, but the practice started for a reason. The simple, unfortunate reality is that a site's contents can and should be made fully accessible to all users, but in many, perhaps most, cases, the user experience cannot be optimized for sighted users, non-sighted users, and mobility-impaired users all at the same time. Skip links are a compromise - they make things somewhat better for users of screen readers and text browsers, and for anyone using a keyboard instead of a mouse. You're right, they don't do the job completely. But revamping the page structure of most sites, or adding on a full table of contents, often makes things worse for sighted, mouse-using users. Whether it's right or wrong, very few site designers would even consider it. Of course, every page is different. If you're talking about a single long document with minimal external navigation, a table of contents may be a perfect solution, but that's a minority of pages at best.
Received on Tuesday, 15 February 2005 15:17:37 UTC