Hidden links

[Foamcow]

Following the recent revelation that ft.com was using hidden links on it's pages I started to think about a current project of mine...

I am building a couple of templates for a small firm of lawyers.
One of the requirements was to make the pages as accessible as possible.
OK, no problem I thought.

Here is the first template:
www. targetgroup. co. uk/ clients/ bpe/ lender/
(I've broken the link to stop SEs picking it up at the moment)

If you look at the source you will see that I have hidden some links on the page. These are purely internal to the page to assist screen readers etc quickly navigate around the page.

Now, I would hope that Google et al would be clever enough to realise that these aren't links to outside sites and as such are not an attempt to dupe the SEs.

What are your opinions on this?

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r

 

[ChrisHunt]

Hmmm...

Well, if I was writing a SE spider, I'd code it to check if the link points to another place on the same page first (cos it's quick & easy), and only if it's pointing elsewhere would I try to determine if it's being hidden (cos that's slower and more difficult). Links internal to the page will be ignored. So you're OK if Google think like me! I wouldn't worry too much about this.

What I would worry about is whether your page will be as accessible as you think it is.
[ul]
[li]You've hidden it by setting the <div> to [tt]display:none[/tt]. My understanding is that many screen readers observe this CSS rule - so the <div> won't get read out either. Consider absolute positioning the div off the screen instead.[/li]
[li]Access keys and skip to links can be useful to sighted visitors too. For example, if you have motor impairments that prevent you using a mouse. So it may be worth trying to make (some of) those links visible somewhere.[/li]
[li]"Press w to skip to the newsfeed" Surely it's Alt-W? It is on PCs anyway. Mind you, I think the jury's very much out on whether accesskeys are a good thing.[/i]
[/ul]
Great looking site, btw.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[Foamcow]

Actually Chirs you have pointed out a few things that I needed to look up to check whether they were going to work.
The absolute positioning idea is something I hadn't thought of and could well be the solution I am looking for! Thanks!

The accesskeys for the navigation show up in title tags on the links. I have made a page that lists access keys for the site so perhaps if I make an obvious, visible link to that page I could accomodate motor impaired users better.

I didn't put the "Alt-w" as some browsers use different modifiers for access keys. I thought it better to let the user determine the access key as saying "Alt-w" could be interpreted as "Press <key modifier>+Alt+w".
I know that I am kind of taking it for granted that the user will know how to use their particular kit but I thought it the best way.

I know what you mean by the jury being out on Access keys. It seems that most assistive technology does the job for us! It would seem more logical to me to let the user agent decide what to press to do what based on a page rather than have me impose my will on the user. After all, for all I know, the user may have "Alt-w" bound to open a particular application.
Don't you think that that would be more in keeping with the whole idea behind the way we try to build sites?


Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r

 

[ChrisHunt]

After all, for all I know, the user may have "Alt-w" bound to open a particular application.
Don't you think that that would be more in keeping with the whole idea behind the way we try to build sites?

That's precisely what I think, and why I don't declare access keys on my sites. This article (and those it links to) puts the case very well:

http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[Foamcow]

You've prompted me to think about this this morning.

I think, in the case of this job I will leave them in the template as a demonstration of how they "could" be used. But I will point out to the client the potential drawbacks and recommend that they be removed in the actual site.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r

 

[ChrisHunt]

Lots of food for thought in this article -

http://redish.net/content/papers/interactions.html

- Accessibility guidelines derived from observing real screen-reader users' behaviour.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd