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Re: Skip links and SEO

for

From: Michael R. Burks
Date: May 2, 2007 10:20AM

Perhaps I am not being clear,

I do not use a screen reader. I would like to see the skip navigation links
on the page so I do not have to search in the bottom left hand corner of the
browser.

Again, sounds like we are designing pages for people with only one kind of
disability.

Sincerely,

Mike Burks




-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Patrick Lauke
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 11:56 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Skip links and SEO

> Michael R. Burks
> Why hide the skip links at all?
>
> I find them useful.
>
> Others may as well. Or are we only building pages that cater to one
> disability?

The larger discussion here should be: why don't all user agents provide
reasonable ways to navigate via keyboard, jumping over block level elements
etc (Opera leads the pack here)?
Skip links are stop-gap solutions that *content* authors add to their pages
to make up for lack of functionality in current browsers, IMHO.

Secondly, it's not really a problem to have a hidden skip link, as long as
it's visible (in an obvious place, where the user would expect it...if it's
the first link in the tab cycle, this would be top-left of the page) when it
receives focus - I did this ages ago on Molly's site www.molly.com, and the
same technique was adapted for the WaSP site www.webstandards.org

P