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Re: "Skip to content" links, visibility and keyboard users without screen readers, to hide or not to hide?

for

From: Will Grignon
Date: Sep 15, 2011 2:24PM


I use JAWS 12, and one of the most infuriating things about a Skip to
Content link is that it can put you anywhere on the page - not necessarily
where you might think the content focus should be, so I still have to arrow
around to first find out where I am, then do some more arrowing around to
find out what I can/should do once I'm there.

For many sites, headers can let the screen-reader user traverse the page
with relative ease, getting a good overview of how the page is laid out and
what actions can be taken on the page.

Relatedly, www.amazon.com has one of the best hidden screen-reader-user
links I've come across. Evidently, sighted users cannot see it, but when I
TAB down once from the top line title, JAWS reads the link and clicking on
it brings the cursor to a very clean array - with all the essential
functions, minus the dozens of menus and hundreds of links which populate
the normal Amazon home page.