While it is nice that guildeline 2.4 of WCAG 2 suggests making a visual ‘skip link’ I do not think it is practical nor a wise recommendation. I think that devices that interpreted a webpage should take note of its semantics. If such a device encounters a list of links, or even more useful a MENU, NAVIGATION (both in HTML5) or NL (XHTML2) element it should note that to the user in one way or another and provide a way to skip it.
By the way, I assume you read Access Matters and understand this is in response to some questions.
Skip links should be a markup problem. (I guess you could also call it a structural or semantic problem, depending on where you from and what you like to hear.) Similar for a piece of formatted text, using ASCII “art” to express something. If I use PRE or perhaps something more semantic like the BLOCKCODE (XHTML2, again) element I expect accessibility devices to do something with that. I don’t think I should clutter my document full of unique IDs and hyperlinks to make sure people with a disability can read my articles as well.
I expect markup to solve those problems. Not me.
I completely agree. However, I do understand the point of view of institutes like Accessibility.nl. They say the markup has to change where current accessibility tools fail. Even if this means that your markup becomes less semantically correct.
I agree with Sjoerd. Until accessibility tools manage to interpret and provide the disabled users with alternate methods to jump over certain sections, it has to stay the way it does.
I don’t think I should clutter my document full of unique IDs and hyperlinks to make sure people with a disability can read my articles as well.
Here I agree with you, Anne.
While I don't see the big problem with a «Skip to content»-hyperlink, I sure don't want to plug my document full of these links.
Good thoughts. What about the following?
<link rel="menu" href="#menu">Yes, perhaps today’s accessibility institutes should recommend otherwise. However, WCAG2 is a W3C specification that should address at least the outline given above in my humble opinion. Perhaps with a non-normative note saying that it might be that existing UAs can’t cope with that. That note could also explain how to deal with them.
Good thoughts. What about the following?
<link rel="menu" href="#menu">
Something like that would be a lot better, in my opinion.
I think navigation would be a better substitute for menu, though.
Good thoughts. What about the following?
<link rel="menu" href="#menu">
That idea sounds wonderful to me. In fact, if you can get handheld user agents to the point they actually use that info, it might be possible to improve accessibility on handhelds, because they now easily can interpret the document structure and use different built-in rendering for those specific purposes.
What do you mean HTML 5?!
We've been using techniques like the following at WATS.ca for almost two years:
<link rel="bookmark" href="#content" title="Page Content" />
<link rel="bookmark" href="#navigation" title="Section Navigation" />
We believe the very same thing: we really shouldn't need skip links and all these other workarounds. We need better user agents. I can't tell you how disappointed I was to learn that the browser on my BlackBerry supports handheld media stylesheets, but has no idea what a fragment identifier is.
What do you mean HTML 5?!