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Re: Rethinking "Skip to Content"

for

From: Jeff Coburn
Date: Dec 2, 2004 9:42AM

In my mind I think of "skip" as going to something within the page that
I am viewing. When I see "go to" I assume that it is a link to something
off the page I am viewing. So when I see "skip to content" I assume it
is taking me down the page I am on to the content. If I see "go to site
map" I assume it is taking me off the page to another page with a site
map. I am just giving you my perspective, which may be different from
the majority of users. I am just an unfrozen caveman lawyer:)

-jc

julian.rickards wrote:
> Interesting thoughts Dagmar.
>
> Those who use JAWS as the screen reader tend to use IE as the browser and
> presumably do not disable styles in IE. Based on this series of assumptions,
> JAWS will read the content in "visible" order, not necessarily source order.
> Therefore, content appears after navbars (except footer navbars).
>
> If you were to use CSS for layout, you can change the source order of the
> content so that the content appears first, then navbars, etc. However, the
> JAWS/IE assumption I made earlier would still read the page in visible order
> but for those who either disable styles or use another browser that does not
> support styles, they would read the content first. I personally create the
> HTML in the same order as it ends up being styled: top-bottom, left-right
> because it is easier to create a floating layout but other orders are
> possible with a bit more effort to style the page so that the content
> appears as header/navbar/content/footer from top-bottom, left-right.
>
> It is difficult to know what the end user wants when they encounter a page.
> They may know that the page they wish to read is three links from the home
> page of the site and therefore would want to use the navbar to get to that
> page. In other cases where the article is divided into multiple pages such
> as those you find at webmonkey.com, sitepoint.com, and webreference.com (and
> others of course), they may wish to simply skip from the "bottom" of one
> page in the article to the top of the next page in the article and skip past
> the navigation, advertising, etc just as sighted persons skip past this
> "fluff".
>
> Yes, "skip" may not be the best word, "go to" may be a better choice.
>
> Jules
>
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