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Re: skip-nav tabindex setfocus etc.

for

From: Gez Lemon
Date: Mar 15, 2006 12:20PM

On 15/03/06, Al Sparber < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> 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.

The confusion is probably more about the link phrase than the concept
of a skip link. Phrases like "skip navigation", "jump to main
content", "jump to navigation", etc, are confusing because they're
not typical of link phrases as they contain verbs that describe an
action rather than a target. A link phrase of "main content",
"navigation menu", or anything else that describes the target rather
than the action is less likely to confuse people.

> Personally, I feel that skip links that appear on focus are always
> seen by the people who would need to use them. Your mileage, as
> always, will vary.

Feelings are great, but empirical evidence to support your hypothesis
would be a lot more useful.

I agree with Patrick that this is really a user-agent issue - skip
links are a hack to make up for shortfalls in user-agents. Having said
that, if you're going to provide skip links, I don't see the point in
hiding them, as the very people that could benefit from them are
likely to miss them. Hiding skip links is merely paying lip-service to
a recognised a problem; better than nothing, but barely adequate.

Best regards,

Gez

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