Website Design Forum - After a week-end of coding

Author

After a week-end of coding

Daniel Déchelotte

2006-03-26, 6:52 pm

Hi,

Here is my revamped personal website, submitted to your acute review :)
http://yo.dan.free.fr/

Two questions I could not answer myself:

* I inserted some "accessibility links" ("Jump to content or navigation
links") and styled them with "display: none". Is there a better way to
make those links useful to those who may need them (i.e. does the
"display: none" hide the link in too clever aural browsers, for
instance)?

* I linked to a flash movie and provided a fallback image in case the
U.A. doesn't support flash. Good, but providing no fallback had at least
the merit of making it extremely clear that "nothing is to be
expected". Instead, I am currently saying "here is the movie", I provide
a screenshot that "looks real", but nothing happens, of course.
The page at stake: http://yo.dan.free.fr/pomdp.phtml.en

Looking forward to your comments,
--
Daniel Déchelotte

David Dorward

2006-03-26, 6:52 pm

Daniel Déchelotte wrote:

> * I inserted some "accessibility links" ("Jump to content or navigation
> links") and styled them with "display: none". Is there a better way to
> make those links useful to those who may need them (i.e. does the
> "display: none" hide the link in too clever aural browsers, for
> instance)?

There aren't many true aural browsers out there, there are quite a lot of
screen readers though - and they read what is on the screen (which doesn't
include display: none elements).

Also, such skip links are very useful for users of small screen devices and
non-pointing device users (since tabbing through all the links is time
consuming at best).

Leaving them visible might be a good idea.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

Daniel Déchelotte

2006-03-26, 6:52 pm

David Dorward a écrit :

> Daniel Déchelotte wrote:
>
>
> There aren't many true aural browsers out there, there are quite a
> lot of screen readers though - and they read what is on the screen
> (which doesn't include display: none elements).

Darn. But thanks: "screen reader" were the keywords I was missing, I
could then find workarounds like the one discussed at
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?pag...eaderVisibility

> Also, such skip links are very useful for users of small screen
> devices and non-pointing device users (since tabbing through all the
> links is time consuming at best).

True. So, I would keep the links for all medias but print and screen
(and friends, but not handheld) with:

@media print, screen, tv, projection {
.accessibility_links { position: absolute; left: -999px; width: 990px; }
}

Works in Opera (normal, print and small screen modes), FF, safari and
(surprise) even IE6 it seems!
http://yo.dan.free.fr/tmp/media.html

> Leaving them visible might be a good idea.

I don't want to sound to much of a deezigner, but that would be
ugly! ;-) And confusing to quite a few users, I think, to have "skip to
links" and "skip to content" links right above the said links and
content.

--
Daniel Déchelotte
http://yo.dan.free.fr/