WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: text links on a separate page - compliant with 508?

for

From: Terence de Giere
Date: Mar 3, 2005 8:15PM

Lisa at <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

Javascript flyout menus are still very popular. Another way to help make them accessible is to place all the the child links on a seperate page when the parent is clicked on. (The original post of this thread was in January)

----

When deciding on a navigation scheme, JavaScript or not, there are other
factors in the choice besides accessibility. About a year and a half ago
Dr. Kath Straub at Human Factors International collected and summarized
a number of research papers on site navigation design.

While these studies focus on visual design and navigation, the summaries
following seem to indicate for the most part that sequential rather than
expandable menus would be the best solution for both accessibility and
general navigation, because navigation is essentially sequential for
aural rendition of web pages, and sequential menus would appear to have
the edge for general navigation by typical users.

One problem with expandable menus which are accessible, is the number of
links presented to the impaired user can be overwhelming, making it
difficult to get to the next level of the site. One certainly expects
lots of links on a site map page, but it is usually less appropriate for
home pages on public sites that will likely have many first-time visitors.

Dr. Straub's summaries of research on site navigation:

1. Although deeper sites tend to be more challenging for users to
navigate, there is a tradeoff between depth and breadth (number of
choices per level) in speed of finding. (Bernard, 2002)
2. Structures that have multiple levels should concentrate site
navigation information at the first level and at the level closest
to the ultimate content pages (or terminal nodes). (Bernard, 2002)
3. Providing a visible sitemap facilitates site learning and
encourages comprehensive exploration of a site. (Danielson, 2002)
4. Less than half of users take advantage of breadcrumbs (even when
most report having noticed them). (Lida, Hull and Pilcher, 2002)
5. Under click-stream analysis, breadcrumbs are not more efficient
than other approaches to navigation. (Lida, Hull and Pilcher, 2002)

6. Expandable menus are slower to navigate than sequential menus.
This is particularly true when users are deeper in a site.
(Zaphiris, Schneiderman & Norman, 2002)
7. Sequential menus helps users develop a better sense of orientation
within a site. (Zaphiris, Schneiderman & Norman, 2002)
8. Users scan group labels within indexed content. (Hornoff and
Halverson, 2003)
9. When users have expectations about where desired information will
appear on the next screen, they move their eyes there in
anticipation while the screen paints. (Hornoff and Halverson, 2003)
10. Indexed menus and vertical menus are preferred over horizontal
menus (in absolute, not statistically significant, terms).
(Bernard and Habmlin, 2002)

11. Users preference tends toward indexed menus over vertical or
horizontal menus. (Bernard and Habmlin, 2002)
12. For searching tasks, pull-down menus provide fastest performance
[presumably sighted users without coordination problems]. For
browsing tasks, combined global / local navigation provides
fastest performance. (Yu and Roth, 2002)
13. Presenting short summaries with text links helps users understand
and predict the content associated with the link. (Baker, Bernard
& Riley, 2002)
14. Users only perceive / encode (change in) elements of the display
that they are directly focused on. (Simon & Chabris, 1999)
15. Research comparing navigation efficiency through sites of varying
depths and breadths broadly converges on the findings that users
find roughly 16 (ungrouped) top-level links leading into 2-3
subsequent menus the most efficient, learnable and least error
prone. [Dr. Straub's comment on this research]

Whether or not JavaScript menus ultimately legally comply with Section
508 is just part of the conumdrum in designing effective, easy-to-use
navigation for a site.

Terence de Giere

<EMAIL REMOVED>