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skip navigational links, image maps

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From: Carol Foster
Date: Aug 15, 2001 12:29AM

Hi Leo and everyone,
I was interested in the questions about skipping navigational links, because we have
just started to experiment with this.
I personally think it is a good idea to make the link visible so that sighted people
with mobility impairments can use such a link and not be confused by it. I had
great hopes for this sort of thing for my own use in keyboarding around sites, but I
have run into some unexpected things, and I'd love to hear others' experiences,
comments and possible solutions:
On the site we're testing (not yet publicly available), tabbing through links works
fine in IE but not in Netscape (not surprising), but it doesn't quite work right in
Opera either (using control and up/down arrows instead of tabs). Also, using JAWS
with IE, the voice skips to the right place, but the tabbing controls do not skip
all the way to the main content anchor point.
I compared this to 2 pages on the WebAIM site (www.webaim.org and
http://www.webaim.org/news/show_item.php?nid=1#content) using Opera and JAWS, which
work fine. The main difference I noticed in the code is that the WebAIM site is
validated to HTML 4.01 transitional, while our site is not quite up to that
standard. Could this be the problem? Also, the anchor name for the content on our
site contained an underscore ("_"), while the WebAIM anchor name did not. I feel
I'm grasping at straws here!
I also tried the WAI home page (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) in Opera, and its skip nav
link worked fine on the first pass, but I could not back up to it (it got skipped
over) or find it on the way back through the page the second time (it got skipped
over again). It worked fine with JAWS.
Thanks so much,
Carol
Leo Smith wrote:
> Hello Everybody,
>
> I had a few questions that I was hoping for some input on.
>
> Firstly, the skip navigational links requirement. It was pointed out to me
> that screen readers would be able to "see" such a link even if it was not
> visible to visual users of a page (that is, the text color of the link matched
> the background page color). This would mean that a "skip links" link could
> be provided but wouldn't have to interfere with the visual layout of the page.
>
> However, this assumes that only folks with a visual impairment would need
> such a link to skip over list of links. Isn't it the case that users with other
> impairments (such as a mobility impairment meaning that the individual
> uses a head wand) would also need such a link to reduce fatigue from
> having to tab through the same navigation bar on each page? These users
> may be using the site visually, so should the "skip navigational" link in fact
> be visible?
> Also, if the repetitive navigation bar is, say, in a far right column on a page,
> where should the "skip links" link to. Should it still link to the start of the
> content of the page, even though the screen reader may have reached this
> point before it reached the navigation? Should all repetitive navigation bars
> be either on the left or at the top of the page, so that the screen reader
> reaches them before it reaches the content of the page? Please excuse
> any apparent ignorance in my assumptions of how screen readers work - I
> am not very familiar with them.
> My other question is in regard to Client-side image maps. One tutorial on
> the Webaim site about alt tags (that wasn't on the tutorials page but was a
> link right from the homepage that is now no longer there - Paul, could you
> send me that URL - I never bookmarked it and used it often for reference!)
> emphasized using alt text for each link in the imagemap (specifying "link
> to..." wasn't necessary here), and also providing alt text for the imagemap
> image (eg. alt="imagemap").
> However, in the tutorials section of the site, I noticed that the "Provide
> equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content" tutorial mentions also
> providing redundant text links for client-side image maps as not all screen
> readers can interpret alt tags in image map links correctly. I see that this is
> a Priority three recommendation, but is this a significant issue with screen
> readers and alt text for image map links, meaning that alternative redundant
> text links should be provided or the image map avoided altogether?
> Finally, if an imagemap is repetitive across pages, should that also have a
> skip links built in, either as part of the map or as a text link before the map?
> Many Thanks.
> Best,
> Leo.
>
> Leo Smith
> USM Office of Publications and Marketing
> 207-780-4774
--
Carol Foster, Web Developer
University Information Systems
University of Massachusetts, President's Office
(413) 587-2130
mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.umassp.edu/uis/ipg
http://www.umassp.edu/uis/ipg/accessibility
--