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Re: Baby Question re separator (greater than and pipe)

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Apr 15, 2006 10:00AM

smithj7 wrote:

> I actually liked the idea of using a border in the css style sheet for a
> separator of links in my required footer (look of footer established by
> Parent Organization). Worked fine, till I checked site without css
> style sheet. Text without separators for sited persons won't be
> approved by my parent organization.

How many of your visitors (and people from your parent organisation)
visit pages with stylesheets turned off?

If things are adequately separated in structure (e.g. using a list for
each individual link, and then styling them as inline with a small
border as separator) then even with styling turned off the separation is
more than obvious, and should satisfy sighted users with and without
stylesheets alike.

> One of the my co-workers that uses
> speech suggested using a graphic (surrounded by white space) as a
> separate, but with the alt being the double quote with no speech on
> graphic.

But that would be, from an idealist's point of view, sullying the markup
to achieve a visual effect...


> I've also read up about the separators for bread crumbs.

This argument comes and goes, with different factions, but: a breadcrumb
trail can be seen as an ordered list of steps, so can be marked up as an
OL. then, you can style it using whatever visual separator you want (as
a border, non-repeating background graphic, etc).

> I like the
> idea of using a graphic rather than the greater than symbol. I liked
> the suggestion of "Now at". But should I put the "Now at" label on each
> of the bread crumb separators? Seems like that could also be a pain for
> a speech user: e.g. Home link Now at Business Enterprises link Now at
> Business Opportunities link Now at Facility 533 Announcement.

That wouldn't make any sense. "Now at" should really only be said once,
surely? *If* you're using an image as a separator, the ALT should either
get out of the way completely, i.e. be empty, IMHO.

P
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Patrick H. Lauke
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