I have an accessibility question. Okay, it’s a set of questions, but they’re really all facets of the same question:
How do I make my site’s structure the most accessible to the most people?
Which sounds a bit broad. Let me narrow it down. Here’s the basic layout order of most pages on meyerweb:
- Masthead
- Navigation (in a
<nav>
element) - Main page content (in a
<main>
element), occasionally with a sidebar - Footer (in a
<footer>
element)
But this is, at the moment, the source order of those pieces:
- Masthead
- Main page content (in a
<main>
element), occasionally with a sidebar - Navigation (in a
<nav>
element) - Footer (in a
<footer>
element)
The difference is the navigation. I put it later in the source order because I want those using speaking browsers to be able to get the content quickly, without having to tab through the navigation on every page.
But is that actually a concern, given my use of a <main>
element for the main content of the page? And the <nav>
and <footer>
elements, do those also help with jumping around the page? If not, what’s the best-practice structural order for those pieces?
If so, does that mean it’s okay to put the navigation back up there in the source order, and stop doing wacky things with the order
element to place it visually where it isn’t, structurally?
I have the same questions for those who use keyboard tabbing of the visual layout, not speaking browsers. What’s the best way to help them? If it’s tabindex
, how should I order the tabbing index?
And in either case, do I need skip links to get people around quickly? Do I want skip links? Do my assistive-technology users want skip links?
Maybe the real question is “Given this layout, and my desire to make getting to main content and other pieces of the page as easy as possible for those who rely on assistive technology, how should I structure and annotate the content to raise the fewest barriers for the fewest people?”
Unless, of course, the real question is one I don’t know enough to ask.
Can you help me out, accessibility hivemind? I’d really appreciate some expert insight. All my instincts are more than a decade out of date.