Re: Accesskey and tabindex not helpful to blind users?

> >general, this is exactly what happens. However, if tabindex is used, this 
> >is not always the case. It can be very confusing to be reading in one 
> >point and then press tab and be taken to a completely different (possibly 
> >unrelated) point of the document.  Another approach to navigating a 

The main reason for tabindex is to compensate for documents in which
reading them in transmission order will cause you to jump about.  E.g.
if tables have been used to layout a form in columns.

The real solution is to transmit the page in the correct order, but
tabindex is a relatively low impact (for the graphic designer) workaround
for not transmitting in reading order, and therefore something someone
who is otherwise reluctant to compromise their visual design may be
willing to add.

If the document is transmitted in reading order (or rather form
completion order) tabindex should be redundant, but not cause 
random jumping because it will just repeat the natural order.  What
does tend to be important is to use it on everything if you use it
on anything.

(I can foresee tabindex becoming more important if people start using
SVG with WYSIWYG design methods.  Even proper implementation of 
CSS positioning by IE could make it more likely that forms get pasted
up, and transmitted, in a more or less random order, even so doing so
is a bad thing.)

Received on Saturday, 9 July 2005 07:05:20 UTC