Prev | Current Page 241 | Next

Craig Grannell

"The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design"


Not all browsers enable tabbing to links, and others require that you amend some preferences
to activate this function, and so tabindex ultimately only really comes in handy
when working with forms, as you??™ll see in Chapter 8. When used for too many other elements,
you also run the risk of tabindex values hijacking the mouse cursor, meaning that
instead of the Tab key moving the user from the first form field to the second, it might end
up highlighting something totally different, elsewhere on the page. What??™s logical to some
people??”in terms of tab order??”may not be to others, so always ensure you test your websites
thoroughly, responding to feedback.
Skip navigation links
Designers who work with CSS layouts tend to focus on information structure, rather than
blindly putting together layouts in a visual editor. This is good from an accessibility standpoint,
because you can ensure information is ordered in a logical manner by checking its
location in the code. However, when considering alternate browsers, it??™s clear that some of
the information on the page will be potentially redundant. For example, while a user surfing
with a standard browser can ignore the masthead and navigation in a split second, rapidly
focusing on the information they want to look at, someone using a screen reader will
have to sit through the navigation links being read out each time, which can prove
extremely tedious if there are quite a few links.


Pages:
229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253