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labeling audience-based navigation

for

From: Peter Weil
Date: Jun 21, 2006 6:30PM

I am trying to decide the best way to label audience-based navigation
links. I keep receiving design comps with navigation headers that
look like this:

Information for (or "Resources for")

Current Students
Prospective Students
Faculty and Staff
Donors

This doesn't strike me as a particularly good approach. I understand
why this might be attractive to designers and editors: it's a "neat"
visual shortcut. But providing users, and especially users with
screen readers, with a header that reads "Information for" doesn't
seem very useful. And while one could employ various coding tricks
(hidden text, etc.), to make it all read more semantically for non-
visual users, I keep thinking that more effective information design
would render such trickery unnecessary.

Perhaps I am making too much of this -- what do other people think?

--
Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Communications
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: 608-262-6538
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>