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Topic: Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere? (Read 2674 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere?

Produces a fixed box at top left of page. Presently in the css #top it is hidden from view with a top: -10em. Looks like the purpose is to give the user a chance to go to 'main content', which is only a fews inches lower than the box itself.   :)

Is it needed or a future feature? Should I have bacon and eggs for dinner?

Re: Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere?

Reply #1 –

#skipnav is an accessibility feature, it allows to skip all the navigation section using the tab of the keyboard.
Without this skip, if you use the keyboard to navigate, you have to tab over all the links in the header (that include all the entries of the menu), that takes quite a while, using that, instead, is just one tab and one enter (unless you are on display with the quick reply on, in that case you are pushed directly to the quick reply).
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Re: Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere?

Reply #2 –

Cool beans! Did not know it was for accessibilty.

As I live in an area that has the state school for blind and deaf kids I should have figured that one out. One question though, presently it is hidden; how will the user know to enable the feature?

Re: Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere?

Reply #3 –

If you use the tab button, it should be the first thing to be selected and it should jump in the visible area (actually it uses an animation and is fairly slow, maybe it should be faster).
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere?

Reply #4 –

Ahhhh ... now I see. Just tried it and yes, the window does drop down. I think it could be a bit quicker. Not normally using a tab I would not have thought to try that.

Is the tab the defacto standard for this type of accessibilty or is that up to the programmer? I ask as the user would have to do a lot of tabs to get back to the dropdown where they elsewhere on the screen. Would a key stoke combination such as alt-t or something else that would take them to the dropdown or the main content be better?

Re: Is #skipnav needed? In the Light variant? Or anywhere?

Reply #5 –

Had an interesting fast read here ..

http://webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/

Try the tab key on that page. They suggest using animation on the target links so the vision impaired will be able to better see the link. They have some good examples on the linked page.