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Re: Location of breadcrum trail on a web page, top, bottom, or somewhere in-between?

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Aug 11, 2011 6:30AM

It seems to me that a breadcrumb would be a fairly important navigational feature of a page since it tells the user where he or she is at and provides a way to back track through the structure of the site (at least the parts they have visited.) My thought is that would seem to indicate that the information be fairly prominent on the page. It should be easy for the user to visually spot--though it wouldn't be the most prominent thing on the page.
That causes me to think that the information needs to be both visually and auditorially prominent. Whether you are looking at the page or listening to it, I would think it needs to be something that is easy enough to locate if you want or need the information.

Placing the bread crumb early in the reading order of the page would definitely be one way to give it prominence and make it easy to find. I suppose making it a header might be another way to give it prominence and make it easy to find for people using screen readers. Possibly using landmarks might also do the same.

Thanks,
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 8:16 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Location of breadcrum trail on a web page, top, bottom, or somewhere in-between?

Hello wise ones.

I am doing an accessibility evaluation of a web page.
It has a breadcrum trail on every page (you are here ... main page --
next page -- etc) (where -- represents a new line character).
This is standard, and I haveno problem with it, per se, though
personally I never use them, notunless page titles are extremely
nclear.
The location of this breadcrum trail here is the second to last item
on the page (after about 5 or 6 different tabs). This is consistent
throughout the subpages of the site.
I am wondering, are there best practice guidelines or practical ideas
about whether this is good or not.
My gut instinct, at least, is to think that this trail should be close
to the top, rather than the bottom. For one thing the user will know
it's there (this is a fairly large page, so users may have given up
looking for it if they rae confused), and secondly, if this is the
wrong page, the user needs to be made aware of the fact before he/she
reads through all the content on the page.
Any ideas/counter arguments?
Cheers
-B