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RE: skip-nav tabindex setfocus etc.

for

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Mar 15, 2006 4:40AM

> Alastair Campbell

> Gez Lemon wrote:
> > Have you done any user-testing to confirm that assertion? ...
> > There is no reason for anyone to assume they should pay special
> > attention to the screen on the off-chance that some navigation
> > aid will suddenly present itself, as it isn't expected behaviour.
>
> A good point, and unfortunately I've found that people who rely on
> keyboard navigation but don't use a screen reader are hard to come by
> for user tests, so it isn't a direct observation.
>
> However, just thinking about it from a logical interaction point of
> view, if you rely on a keyboard to navigate, but without
> something like
> a screen reader, what are the options apart from tab?

I think the http://www.particlephysics.ac.uk/ example was a slightly
bad one, as the skip links are very easy to miss if you're not expecting
them. That's why I'd say that the links need to appear in a position
where the user would direct their attention anyway, and be very obvious
(background colour etc).

Of course, having an always visible skip link is the most ideal solution,
but it often is at odds with visual design (and personally I still
find it to be a clunky solution to make up for the fact that user
agents don't normally allow to easily skip things like entire lists etc).

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
________________________________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
________________________________