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RE: Visible skip navigation links, was: good example

for

From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Nov 13, 2003 9:43AM

Jim Thatcher points out the fundamental problem with the skip
navigation requirement of Section 508. Putting the whole burden on the author will
always lead to browser compatibility issues. It should be a shared
burden. Authors should be required to use some markup like the MAP
element (which can use text links) to indicated collections of related links on a pages (often
there are more than one navigation bar on a page) and browsers should be
required to allow users to either move keyboard focus over the links
contained in the MAP elements or move to the first link of a navigation
bar. This allows for users to not only skip over navigation bars, but
allows them to skip to a navigation bar if they waant to go to a different
link.

Jon


On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Jim Thatcher wrote:

> Has anyone tried the visible skip link at, say, http://www.acb.org? Tab to
> "skip navigation links," press enter to follow the link and then tab again.
> Oops! My version of IE on Windows XP puts the selection back on the skip
> link. I believe it is a fundamental bug in IE. Basically, in-page links
> don't work correctly.
>
> It seems, as we discuss solutions like skipping navigation, we ought to be
> sure they work as expected. The frustration of navigating the web must be
> heightened and aggravated when presented "solutions" just don't work.
>
> There are a couple of work-arounds that I know about. Make the named anchor,
> actually an empty link - this is annoying for some but most reliable. It
> seems also that when the named anchor is in a table cell, then tabbing
> works.
>
> Jim
> Accessibility, What Not to do: http://jimthatcher.com/whatnot.htm.
> Web Accessibility Tutorial: http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm.
>
>
>