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Re: skip link breaks back button

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Mar 17, 2014 9:22AM

The problem is that webkit browsers have never properly supported
in-page links, including "skip" links. While they visually scroll,
they do not set keyboard focus to the target of the "skip" link, thus
rendering them useless to keyboard users (though screen readers
generally account for this bug).

We at WebAIM implemented a simple script that would set tabindex="-1"
on the target of in-page links (this is necessary in webkit to set
focus) and then explicitly focus them with scripting. This resolved
the focus issues and stopped the very frequent e-mails from people
complaining that our "skip" link didn't work when in fact their
browser didn't.

However, as noted here, I see this also causes issues with the back
button. In fact, it's the same issue - browsers don't set focus back
to the page itself when back is pressed after activating an in-page
link. Again, a webkit bug.

I have just resolved this with a minor change to our script that
detects a change in the page hash and sets focus back to the head
section of the page (you can't focus the window or body in Firefox) if
the hash is empty (i.e., they hit the back button after an in-page
link). This should resolve the issue, though the best resolution would
be for browsers to actually support keyboard navigation properly.

And to clarify, WCAG 2.0 does not require "skip" links. It does,
however, require "a mechanism" to skip repeated blocks of content.
Landmarks or headings certainly meet this requirement. However, modern
browsers do not provide navigation by these elements (something they
should do), thus we still recommend "skip" links as a necessary (and
rather intrusive and ugly) 'hack' to provide better accessibility for
sighted keyboard users.

Jared Smith
WebAIM.org