WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: skip-nav tabindex setfocus etc.

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Mar 15, 2006 11:40AM

> The new WaSP templates will have this as well, however, I personally
> think a visible skip link shows buy-in to web accessibility a lot more
> than any "WCAG compliant and Bobby Approved" banners would ever do.
>
> Is it about stickers and approvals or about accessibility?

Ask clients like councils. I've spent many a time telling them that
putting lots of banners on the site does not make it accessible.
Clients that are legally bound (or think they are more legally bound
than others) are very much for showing off that they are doing
something in terms of accessibility. That in most of the cases this is
lip-service or sometimes even harmful is the other side of the story,
but at least this is a hook you have to get them to embrace diversity
and "ambient findability".
Lame flamebait, by the way.

> ------------------------------------
> We do use visible "back to top" links, why not "skip to navigation"?
> ------------------------------------
> Back to top links are debatable, but have been overused into an
> almost-convention. We have over 30,000 customers and each time we've
> developed a product (or deployed on our site) visible skip links, many
> people have expressed confusion. We've also had many reports of
> clients of customers being confused.

So if more visible skip links were to be used all around the web
they'd become an almost-convention, too. Chicken and Egg.