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Re: Tabindexes

for

From: Hoffman, David
Date: Dec 15, 2004 3:06PM


The downside is that by deviating from an anticipated tab order, you are
likely to seriously confuse the visual keyboard user who is unlikely to
expect the customized behavior. Keep in mind that unless you are building a
web application that will be used by the same people over and over again,
your site is one among many other sites. Users will not expect to need to
learn the quirks of sites that deviate from the typical expected tab
behavior.

What does your template look like? I have experimented with techniques for
improving keyboard navigation without creating unusual behaviors...

Take Care,
David

-----Original Message-----
From: sethmr [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 4:57 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Tabindexes



Hi,

I'd like to use tab indexes to make keyboard navigation a little easier
in the template I'm building. But what I'm thinking is that rather than
index every menu link (there are a lot) it might be a better idea to
only index a few tab stops that people might want to get to fast if
they need or want to use the keyboard and leave the rest of the tab
order at its defaults. So I've indexed in order the skip nav link, the
link to the catalog (we're a library web site), and the search form.
After that, all tab stops go in their default order.

I can't think of any downside to this method. What am I missing?


You can see what I mean here:
http://www.joneslibrary.org/newbanner13.html

Thanks,

Seth

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