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Thread: labeling audience-based navigation
Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)
From: Peter Weil
Date: Wed, Jun 21 2006 6:30PM
Subject: labeling audience-based navigation
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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 ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Jun 21 2006 6:50PM
Subject: Re: labeling audience-based navigation
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On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Peter Weil wrote:
> 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.
It's not particularly bad either, but I agree with you. The heading is a
fragment, and the links are fragments too. The naive interpretation, when
seeing a link like "Current Students" is that it is _about_ current
students. And in accessibility, we should worry about people being naive
at times, or regularly.
So I would try to use a heading that acts as a heading, rather than a
starter. I don't know how to express the idea of audience-based navigation
links compactly, but I hope you can figure out something. "Information for
specific audiences" might work if you don't find anything better.
Following these ideas, I would use link texts like
For current students
For prospective students
etc., without capitalization (which can be misleading) except in the first
word. I admit that this may look a bit odd and that it violates the good
design principle that a link should be a noun (substantive) or more
generally a noun clause. Yet, "for ..." is a natural shorthard for
"information for ...".
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Peter Weil
Date: Wed, Jun 21 2006 7:00PM
Subject: Re: labeling audience-based navigation
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Thank you Cath. Our team has been trying to come up with suitable
headers that can stand alone, and your suggestions are very helpful.
Sometimes it's hard to break old habits, particularly when there is a
perception that the use of fragmentary headers and link text is
common enough that it has become a widely-accepted practice.
- Peter
On Jun 19, 2006, at 1:29 PM, Kilcommons,Cath wrote:
> Peter Weil asked about "the best way to label audience-based
> navigation
> links" and wrote...
>> 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 personally believe you are correct that it does matter,
> especially if
> set up your navigation in a list or outline type of hierarchy. It is a
> question I have fielded before (many folks in the university set up
> their sites this way), and I generally answer that the header needs to
> be able to stand alone.
>
> Our department ended up going with "Your Resources".
> Other ways I have seen this handled include:
> Please select a category:
> Special Interest Areas
> Information for You
>
> ++++++
> Cath Stager-Kilcommons
> ACCESS Project
> Access Specialist
> Assistive Technology Resource Center (ATRC)
> Colorado State University
> 970-491-0788
> http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/ATRC/
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>
>
>
>
--
Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Communications
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: 608-262-6538
Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Kilcommons,Cath
Date: Wed, Jun 21 2006 9:20PM
Subject: RE: labeling audience-based navigation
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Peter Weil asked about "the best way to label audience-based navigation
links" and wrote...
>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 personally believe you are correct that it does matter, especially if
set up your navigation in a list or outline type of hierarchy. It is a
question I have fielded before (many folks in the university set up
their sites this way), and I generally answer that the header needs to
be able to stand alone.
Our department ended up going with "Your Resources".
Other ways I have seen this handled include:
Please select a category:
Special Interest Areas
Information for You
++++++
Cath Stager-Kilcommons
ACCESS Project
Access Specialist
Assistive Technology Resource Center (ATRC)
Colorado State University
970-491-0788
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/ATRC/
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =