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Re: should 'skip to content' be the first elementonthepage?

for

From: Karl Groves
Date: Feb 21, 2007 5:40AM

>
> But isn't part of the idea of designing to the standards that
> we don't have to try and figure out what users are expecting,
> or what percentage of users are expecting one thing, and what
> percent expect another?


It has long been my view that many of the accessibility guidelines are based
on either conjecture or the personal preferences of a vocal few. The truth
is, there has been very little in the way of research into which of the
guidelines actually *help* people, which are useless, and which are possibly
adding to the frustration.

There was an excellent article written by Ginny Redish and Mary Theafanos
which covers some work they did with users of screen readers:
http://redish.net/content/papers/interactions.html Unfortunately, this also
only covered one type of disability - blindness.

Before anyone can make any definitive claims about these guidelines, the
community needs to get past a lot of the conjecture-driven claims and
personal preference-driven opinions and really do some research on what
helps most.

So, yes, we do have to try and figure out what users are expecting.


Karl L. Groves
User-Centered Design, Inc.
Office: 703-729-0998
Mobile: 443-889-8763
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