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Re: Accessible popup menus - bottom line

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From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Jul 29, 2005 3:03AM

> Although tonight's discussion has been lively, I am now more unclear as
> whether pop up menus can be accessible. I'm still not sure whether I should
> bother implementing them on my own site - www.webaccessibility.biz. I
> welcome CONSTRUCTIVE ideas on improving /condensing the navigation.

Look at the size of your sitemap:
http://www.webaccessibility.biz/Sitemap.htm

What is there to condense ? :-) You did well as it is. The only issue
is that the sitemap and the navigation have a different order, which
is a bit odd.

Navigation is the process of travelling through information. The
amount of information defines the nature of the technical aids we use
to navigate - a list, tabs, nested tabs, dropdowns, a to z, directory
of services and and and

In many cases a popup navigation or any other dynamic form of
navigation is not used to help the visitors but to make the site
snazzier, and that is not what navigation is for. Visitors will find
you and stay on your site for content, not for a cool navigation.

Improvements:
- Id try to make the main navigation more obvious by styling it
differently and mark it up as a list rather than disjointed links with
| in between them, this will also allow you to add sub sections should
the site grow in the future.
- The logo is too big for my taste, and could use a cleanup (it has
GIF dithering artifacts all over) You are using about 200 pixels of
valuable screen estate for your logo, space people have to scroll
through on screen magnifiers.



--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/