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RE: good examples of javascript "roll over" menus with a n accessible alternative

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Jul 29, 2005 5:00PM

> Off Topic possibly but -
> should/shouldn't "skip-to" links be visible to all?)

First, I just want to say that that was an excellent post, John. It summed
up the issues with fly-out menus in general quite well.

As to the specific comment above, I thought I'd expand on my comment before
on suggesting making interface widgets like this an user-option.

There is no argument that skip links are useful. There are valid arguments
on both sides as to whether or not they should be visible:

Arguments for VISIBLE:

- helps to indicate to those that can see just fine, but prefer to use
the keyboard that they can skip directly to the content area

Arguments for NOT VISIBLE:

- takes up screen real estate
- may confuse people that don't know what it's for

As such, I took the easy (cowards?) way out on our site design* this past
year:

http://www.courts.state.mn.us/accessibility/

I made it an option for the end-user. The links are always there, but only
visible if you want them visible. Same goes for the on-screen font resizer,
which falls into the same category as above (there are perfectly valid
argument for both having it and not having it on the site).

And, again, this all goes for this debate on fly-out navigation as well.

We've been fine without fly-out navigation on our site for a while, but a
lot of folks...namely internal employees, really would like to see it, so
I'm not thinking that I'm definitely going to make this an option if people
want it via the same method as the other items.

I'm curious as to what others think about this. Am I overthinking the issue?
Has anyone seen simliar or better implementation elsewhere?

-Darrel

* = yes, I know there are still a lot of other accessibility issues with
this site. General feedback is certainly welcome, but just FYI, we're doing
version '2.0' by end of year with a much more overhauled site in terms of
addressing accessibility issue.