Sent by Bob Easton on 9 September 2003 11:11
Many of us are moving from table based layouts to CSS based layouts and
throwing out all of the spacer images too. One of the other things to
get thrown out is the age old practice of attaching the accessibility
links (skip navigation) to a spacer image. Instead, we now see
designers putting skip navigation links, and other sorts of
accessibility material, in pages as simple text and then hiding it from
the screen with display:none.
The problem is that it does not work as expected. In all of the major
screen readers, when you hide material from visual display, you also
hide it from screen readers.
This conclusion comes from research I did recently with a test suite
that was answered by people using a wide range of screen readers and
other assistive technology.
The test suite: http://eleaston.com/bob/screenreader-visibility.html
The results: http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ScreenreaderVisibility
Please read the results. It will answer a few of the likely questions.
i.e. No, current screen readers do not read aural style sheets.
i.e. The best way to hide skip nav links is the way we have always done
it, with a link on a small / unobtrusive / or transparent image.
--
Bob Easton
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