WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Skip links and SEO

for

From: Randall Pope2
Date: May 2, 2007 7:50PM

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

Actually the skip links can benefit those who use the keyboard instead of
the mouse. This concept work well with people with low vision and don't use
screen readers, less time to find the link or/and content of the page. Also
we need to consider people have carpal tunnels and cannot use the mouse.

Many thanks for the suggestion as I'm going back to the drawing board to
revise the hidden skip links with CSS. The testing site is
http://aadb.org/testing if anyone is curious of my new project. It still
has a long way to go.

Take care,
Randy Pope

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Michael R. Burks
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 12:10 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Skip links and SEO

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