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Re: Please assist a web developer...

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jul 23, 2014 4:41PM

It depends.
Remember that screen readers follow the content or code order whereas
you can make anything appear anywhere visually using CSS.
It is best practice when those things are similar, or at least both
have to be logical.
You can use a good heading structure or ARIA landmarks to give screen
reader users the chance to skip past the content they don´t want to
the content they do want.
regarding ads, make sure to put them inside a div with role="region"
and an aria-label (which is an invisible label mostly for the benefit
of screen reader users), something descriptive like "promotions" or
"advertizements" or "please note" (I mean it is ok to market to blind
users too).
Make sure your site navigation is marked with role="navigation", your
main content with role="main" and footer with role="contentinfo".
If the page contains one single point of interest (say if user clicked
on a link that takes him to a page with a main news story), make sure
to put an h1 at the beginning of that content (screen reader users
often navigate by headings).
The most difficult thing about advertizements in general is the
tendency of marketting to get fancy and deploy animation (carousels),
Flash and so on, which can often distract people, particularly screen
reader users or their software.
Make sure users can stop any animation and skip over such content.
Cheers


On 7/23/14, G Hickling < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I would like some comments, please, from blind and low-sighted users of
> screen readers on a point of usability. Lots of websites these days put
> the navigation menu on the top line of the browser window, before the
> site logo and the rest of the header. Other sites start off with adverts
> from third parties in the same position.
>
> It seems to me this sort of thing must be a nuisance to screen reader
> users, by leaving a lot of stuff to wade through or skip over before the
> user even knows what the site is about (I know the initial title and
> description, which are announced first by the screen reader, are
> supposed to say what site it is, but we don't always get that right
> either!.
>
> As a web developer I would like to know if practice of ours this causes
> problems for blind and low sighted screen reader users, or are you ok
> with it?
>
>
> --
> http://www.fastmail.fm - The way an email service should be
>
> > > >


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