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text links on a separate page - compliant with 508?

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From: Schuffman, Jan (General Services - ADA)
Date: Jan 10, 2005 1:35PM

I've been working with a webmaster on a particular site, trying to help
him get it into compliance with Section 508. One problem it had was that
the navigation was done with Javascript, and we had at least one blind
user who called to complain that there were no navigation links on the
page (her screenreader didn't recognize them).

I talked with that webmaster about adding text links to the bottom of
the page, with a link to them at the top. He understood the idea. What
he's done, however, is create a page with content that's just a
collection of text links to the various pages on the site (not quite a
site map page, but close). Each page on his site now has "Access Text
Links" in an appropriate place at the top, and it goes to that new page.


This is the first time I've seen it done this way, as opposed to a
collection of text links on each page. Does anyone have any experience,
educated guesses, intuition, etc., as to whether this would pass muster,
especially with 508? Paragraph (l) [lower case L] says: "...if a web
page uses a script to create a graphic map of menu choices when the user
moves the pointer over an icon, the web site designer may be required to
incorporate "redundant text links" that match the menu choices because
functional text for each menu choice cannot be rendered to the assistive
technology." But it doesn't appear to address whether those redundant
text links must appear on each page or would be acceptable on a page of
their own.

What do you think?
-Jan