Thread Subject: Re: Bypassing content.

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From: Barrett, Don
Date: Fri, Jun 08 2007 12:50 PM

The original "skip repetitive navigation links" standard was a very
useful and easily implemented standard, as people could tell what was
meant immediately by reading the standard.
Just making major blocks of content programmatically determinable
doesn't necessarily mean they will be easily skippable, at least, as I
understand it.


Don Barrett
Section 508 Coordinator
U.S. Department of Education
(202)-205-8245
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Walser,
Kate
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 2:30 PM
To: TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Bypassing content.

Sean, your suggestion to phrase things positively such as "The location
of the start of each major block of a web page shall be programmatically
determinable" sounds good and headed more towards a testable solution.

With respect to the "logical tab order" that's been suggested in a few
folks' e-mails - "logical" becomes tricky. "Logical" is clear to me as a
usability and accessibility-minded person, but to some well-intentioned
but new to accessibility person, it can be dangerous. Example: I saw an
application an agency had had developed for them in which the developers
set the recurring navigation menu on the page to be last in tab order
via tabindex. Unfortunately, this didn't mirror the visual layout of the
page or the order without CSS. The page had literally hundreds of links
on it as it was a more complex application. As a result, users with
screen readers heard the menu first, then the rest of the page contents,
and couldn't seem to get to that menu via tabbing as it was link #156 or
so down the page. Extreme example I know, but as we've ditched the
"readable without style sheet" language and in light of a judgment call
of "logical", becomes tricky. To these developers, the tab order they'd
set was completely logical and satisfied the standard about skipping
past repetitive links.

Cheers,
Kate

Kate Walser
Director, Usability Center of Excellence SRA International, Inc.
4300 Fair Lakes Court
Fairfax, VA 22033
(703) 502-1170

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