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Re: Re[2]: Re[2]: Dayton Art Alternative Descriptions

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Nov 10, 2004 5:33PM

> > But how will people know where to find your navigation links then?
>
> They jump to the end of the page, using whatever function is used for that
> in a browser. That's where people go anyway if they wish to find
> contextual information and didn't find it at the start.

I'm not convinced that is the case. Experienced users will be able to
figure out any site, regardless of what kind of user agent they are using.
But I'm not sure that inexperienced users of screen readers will immediately
assume that they can find site navigation at the end of a page if an
indication about this is not read out immediately. Aren't there lots of
pages that currently use inaccessible image maps or other menus at the top
of a page and which do not include accessible text-only menus at the bottom?
I imagine some users might assume that a page without a standard navigation
at the top or indicated by a link somehow at the beginning of the page might
think that the page is just another one of those inaccessible pages without
functional links. I'm not sure about this, I'm just speculating, but I am
not sure that making no indication of your site navigation system at or
close to the beginning of a page is going to be immediately understood.

And for more experienced users of screen readers, I had the impression that
some of them make extensive use of shortcut keys which will jump through
links based on the first letter, and in such cases, I thought that these
users might actually expect the letter "h" to arrive at the "Home" page link
or the "Help" link, or the letter "c" to lead to "Contact Us" or "e" to lead
to "Email". So, rather than bothering to listen to a full set of navigation
links, they might just try to jump directly to a "Home" page link before
even trying to figure out the full site navigation system. Maybe that is
only true for a small number of users, or maybe it is only true for users
who are familiar with the site in question, but I've sat and browsed with an
experienced JAWS user who seemed to me to use this strategy. Maybe if the
user had not encountered any links at the beginning of the page, they might
have jumped to the end of the page, I'm not sure. Or maybe I didn't quite
understand what the user was doing -- the browser was reading so quickly
that I had difficulty following.


> > Whereas the need to jump to the end of the document and then backtrack
> > (potentially experiencing the navigation in reverse) is not an
> > inconvenience?
>
> Not really, when there's just a small set of navigational links there.
> Perhaps just one, pointing to an index page that has site navigation and
> little else.

I think I understand what you're suggesting now, but it sounds like a
recommendation for future design directions for web design generally, as
opposed to a recommended best practice for current websites generally. Or
like a recommendation for the design of particular kinds of information
sites.

The navigation design structure you are suggesting makes sense, I think, but
it will require a bit of a paradigm shift on the Internet for it to become
*more* comprehensible to the average user than a design which follows the
currently most common standard site navigation design. In terms of
navigation, I think there is a value in following the generally most popular
systems, since users have come to expect certain things on *any* web page: a
link to the home page, a "contact us" or "email" link, an "About Us" link, a
search box if the site is searchable, an "FAQ" link if relevant, a "Support"
or "Help" link if relevant, etc. Meeting a user's expectations about these
things will make your site easier to navigate I think. You'll have to do
some more work to convince me that having only one or two navigation links
on each page will function better than the more common use of a reasonable
set of main navigation links, at least in the context of current web
practices.

Beyond that, I think there are a number of reasons why some users might like
to have access to a more than minimal set of navigation links on any
particular page. One reason is that in some cases, a user does not go
beyond a single page. Having a reasonably full set of well-thought out
navigation links allows such one-stop users to grasp the breadth of the site
without visiting a new page, such as a site map. A web-savvy, sighted user
can make such an assessment quite rapidly I think by simply glancing at a
menu and perhaps floating the mouse pointer across a couple of the items.
The entire mental and visual process can be completed in much less time than
it takes to click a link and load up a new page in a browser I imagine. I
would expect such a user makes a dozen or so quick judgements in a matter of
a couple seconds after first arriving at any site.

Also, in some cases, a user will visit a single page on a site without
looking for any particular content. A user may not know what content they
are looking for, except in a vague way, and so they may end up browsing
aimlessly through various links they got from a friend or from a search
engine. They might just be "surfing", or they might have arrived there by a
link from another site. In such cases, a user may judge the website by both
its "main page content" and also by its "navigation content". A good set of
navigation tools tells such users something about the information
architecture of a site and may suggest to them whether the site will be of
interest to them. If the main "navigation" content is not on the page that
a person views or hears, then a user cannot evaluate that part of the site
without going to a second or additional page.

The navigation system you suggest may be the best possible strategy for
certain kinds of sites, depending on the kind of information being
presented, but I am not sure about pushing it as a best practice for all
sites at the moment.

Phil.