WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Tabindexes

for

From: Seth Rothberg
Date: Dec 15, 2004 5:57PM

I'm so out of it at this point that I'm replying to myself.

Here's my new plan for tab indexes. I don't see any valid way to remove
some links from the tab order, but what I can do is move the links in
my submenus to the end of the page by giving them very high indexes.

So now, when a visitor tabs through the page, he or she will move along
the links on my top menu bar (which link to pages that contain
everything from the submenus that he or she is missing), go from there
to the site search and then down into the other parts of the page. The
tab order doesn't contradict the visual order of the links. And, I
don't know, but it's kind of nice that the main site links are
available at page's end too.

Again, I ask: What am I missing?

Seth

On Dec 15, 2004, at 6:16 PM, sethmr wrote:

>
>
> On Dec 15, 2004, at 5:54 PM, andrew.arch85 wrote:
>
>> The other thing I noticed was the disappearance of the tab focus as I
>> tab
>> through the menu - is this due to drop-down menus that are not
>> dropped down
>> on tabbing? This was also quite confusing. Best practice (IMHO) is
>> not to
>> provide keyboard/tab access to the expanded menu, but to allow
>> keyboard
>> users to just access the top level and then go to an intermediate
>> page with
>> the dropdown choices clearly visible. On analysis I found 55 links on
>> your
>> page, but far less that I could see where I was going to. This meant
>> that
>> "About Us" was link 27 on the page, rather than link 9 - very
>> annoying and
>> tedious!
>>
>
> Thanks for the input. So all the submenu links should have tab indexes
> of -1? That's an excellent idea!
>
> Seth
>
> ----
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>