Thread Subject: Re: Bypassing content.

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From: Katie Haritos-Shea
Date: Mon, Jun 18 2007 1:47 PM

As far as the visual appearance of 'skip to main content' links affecting the page real estate........

I think we all understand the hard-sell issues, but that shouldn't keep us from requiring and defining the functionality we know is useful and important for *all* persons with disabilities, to cover as many needs as possible.

One could argue that sitemaps, redundant links (ie for image maps), table captions, white space/spacing requirements, even the semantic structure (h#), affect visual page real estate and possibly some cognitive understanding.

Have these not been useful tools towards our goal of providing accessibility standards? Has this not steered AT and IT development in the right direction?

My point is that....though visual 'skip to main content' links (as one method of meeting this requirement) can indeed be a hard sell, it should not stop us from requiring what we know will assist users in acheiving comparable access.

Katie Haritos-Shea


-----Original Message-----
>From: Sailesh Panchang < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
>Sent: Jun 12, 2007 4:54 PM
>To: 'TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee' < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
>Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Bypassing content.
>
>>It is also one of the very few things that directly impact visual design
>>and that is a *VERY* big barrier for implementation in many areas. I thus
>>advocate a broader definition of "mechanisms" to allow flexibility and
>>future-proofing.
>I second this without hesitation. Indeed even private sector organizations
>not covered by S508 implement invisible skip nav because it does not come in
>the way of visual design and yet helps a section of their visitors. I agree
>that a visible link helps some users. But a visible skip nav link like a
>visible D-link has the ability to confuse many users who have no use for
>them. It is also a hard-sell to powers that be who are responsible for site
>design and need accessibility-education.
>Sailesh Panchang
>Senior Accessibility Engineer
>Deque Systems Inc. (www.deque.com)
>11130 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite #140,
>Reston VA 20191
>Phone: 703-225-0380 (ext 105)
>E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>
>

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