skip nav link

[kalidust]

I had a conversation this morning with someone who is blind and works at a center that trains people who are blind to use technology.

He said the biggest hurdle that he and other people he works with and trains is not being able to by pass the navigation of a page when using a screen reader.

Each page that they would go to, the screen reader "reads" the navigation. They want and need a way to go directly to the content of the page, and a way to get back to the navigation.

I usually use a "skip navigation" link and a "go to navigation" link and asked how helpful these are when using a screen reader. He said that these links, next to having alt attribute on images, are the most important thing to them on a website.

[Quadrille]

Could you post an example of such a page, so we can see where (and how!) they might be placed? TIA!

[french dread]

This technique is implemented on my weblog. In the top of code, I have 3 links : "go to content" , "go to menu", "go search" (in french "aller au contenu", "aller au menu", "recherche")

[kalidust]

Originally posted by Quadrille
Could you post an example of such a page, so we can see where (and how!) they might be placed? TIA!

I have it on my site www.kalidust.com

[Quadrille]

I found a site that suggested using an "unimportant image: Use an image that otherwise needs no text equivalent and place the link text as alt text on that image" in order to keep it off the visible page (I note that CNN does this.

eg {a href="#Main"}{img src="spacer.gif" width="1" height="1" alt="Skip Navigation"}{/a}

Would this be OK, as the users would be using a text viewer and / or the tab button?

Mind you, they also suggested using invisible text :rolleyes:

What do you think?

[kalidust]

AFAIK, that would be ok to do. It's best to do this at the beginning of the page, just as would a regular text link to "skip navigation" or "go to content" would be.