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Re: headings on navigation lists

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 21, 2010 3:27PM

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Angela French < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Is there a best practice for including some sort of heading on navigation lists?

I assume you mean some sort of heading that says, "Navigation" or
"Main Navigation" or similar that is presented just before the
navigation links, correct? If so, my opinion is that if they aren't
necessary visually to identify the navigation on the page, why should
they be necessary to someone that cannot see the page?

I do understand that they might provide some utility in jumping
quickly to navigation (though much less so if you're actually using a
true list for your navigation links), but they also come with a lot of
overhead. Screen reader users generally understand that the bunch of
links near the beginning of the page are the navigation, just like
sighted users understand this.

You can, however, greatly facilitate navigation navigation (see what I
did there?) by adding ARIA landmark roles.

Jared Smith
WebAIM