Tips
for accessibility
8.
Provide clear and consistent navigation mechanism
Always
make your site easy to navigate so that the visitor can move around
the site easily and find the information / services required quickly.
Visually impaired visitors often use the 'TAB' or 'Arrow' key for
navigation but the 'TAB' or 'Arrow' key motion only allows linear
(and sequential) access of the links. To facilitate users to move
to the various sections of a site quickly, frequently accessed navigation
buttons / links e.g. 'Sitemap', 'Home' buttons are normally placed
at the top part of a web page. The layout of each web page should
be consistent so that the user can locate the navigation links on
each page at similar positions. A good navigation not only benefits
people with disabilities, it also helps all other users to access
the site more efficiently.
Suggestions
and examples -
-
Provide a text-only sitemap. It can be loaded quickly and provides
a fast path for users to transfer to various sections of a site.
-
Make the sitemap or other section transfer links easily accessible
from all pages of the web site.
- Do
not place a cluster of links at both the top and bottom of a page
as it causes difficulties in accessing the main content of a page.
-
The homepage of a web site usually has its characteristic design
that is different from its content pages. Some web sites may also
have more graphic decoration at the homepage, A text link to the
sitemap placed at the top of the entry homepage of a site helps
users to navigate quickly. This allows the users to go straight
to the sitemap without waiting for the download of all the graphics
at a homepage.
- Hot
keys can also be set up to facilitate users to jump to a certain
frequently accessed link, e.g. a 'alt-j' key could be programmed
with the use of the 'accesskey' parameter to go directly to the
'Sitemap' link or the 'Text-only version' link of a page. In this
page, the key 'alt-j' is programmed as follows: -
<a
accesskey="j" href="../sitemap/sitemap.html" ... >
Try to press 'alt-j' at this page, the cursor would jump to the
sitemap. (Please use Internet Explorer to try this function)
-
Search feature should normally be provided for a large site so
that users can locate the required information easily.
|