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Accessibility Tip:
Designing Accessible Navigation Part 2
by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.
A consistent presentation style and multiple navigation options help visitors who have learning or physical disabilities locate the information they need. Although you have a lot of options when it comes to navigation systems, always remember to include text links on every page. All visitors can use text links - not just young ones with the latest plug-ins, nimble fingers, and eagle-eye vision.
Text links help you optimize your Web site for accessibility, usability, and search engine appeal.
Always Include Text Navigation
Your text navigation is where you can really convey important information to visitors with disabilities and give search engine spiders good content to index. If your site is content-rich, you should have many opportunities to include text links on your pages.
The following list show you how to take advantage of all text links have to offer:
- Site map: A page containing a site map or navigation tree helps visitors visualize the structure of your Web site and also helps search engine spiders crawl through your entire site. Avoid dead end pages by including a link to your site map on every page.
- Descriptive links: People who use screen readers often scan a page by skipping from link to link so be sure the text is descriptive. It should make sense when read out of context. A link that says "Buy" gives just a little information, but "How to buy a Persian cat" is a lot more descriptive. It's also a nice keyword phrase that some visitors might enter into a natural language search engine like AskJeeves.
- Link titles: Improve usability and keyword density by adding titles to your links. This doesn't work in all browsers, but it's a nice effect that won't cause errors in incompatible browsers.
- Splash pages: A splash page without any content or text links is as useless to a search engine spider as it is to a blind visitor. Always include at least one text link on an opening splash page. Make it as descriptive and keyword-rich as possible.
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Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Although your links, file names, and ALT text need to be keyword rich and descriptive, don't get too carried away. You risk the goodwill of visitors who are listening to your content if your descriptive text is too long and/or repetitive. Unlike visitors who are reading the page, someone listening to the content can't just glance at a section and quickly skip over it if it isn't relevant to their search.
Even more important, too many keywords can get you kicked out of some search engines. Some spam sites use a technique called "keyword stuffing" where they repeat the same words over and over in an attempt to get a high rank on those words. Search engines are wise to that technique though and penalize sites that try it.
If you're worried that you've overused your keywords, let Page Primer analyze it for you. Page Primer will calculate your keyword density score and advise if you've over or under-used some keywords.
Internal Page Navigation
Although it's important to have a site structure that's easy to navigate, don't forget to create individual pages that are navigable also.
"Skip To" links: Most visitors come to your page looking for specific information. Make it easy for them to jump directly to the content section or your navigation section by adding links at the top of your page.
Place them at the very top of your page, before any of your other code in the body section so that screen readers will read them first. You can include them as invisible GIFs image links or as text links. What you select depends on the design of your site.
- Invisible GIF: Open your favorite graphics program and create a 1 pixel by 1 pixel invisible GIF, then place it at the top of the page. You'll have to create anchor tags for each section and insert those in the body of the document.
Look at this sample page. We used a slightly larger GIF (10px by 10px) and turned the borders on for the example so you could clearly see where they're placed.
- Text Links: This is even easier. Just place text links that say "Skip to navigation" and "Skip to content" at the top of the page. Remember to add the correct anchor tags in the document!
See how text links work in this sample page.
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Accesskey attribute: The accesskey attribute is a great way to make your page accessible to visitors who aren't using a mouse for navigation. Use it to set up keyboard shortcuts to let visitors navigate through your site using their keyboards.
Our October, 2001 Accessibility tip, "Keyboard Shortcuts With Accesskey," discusses this attribute in detail.
Accessible Navigation Is Good Navigation
It's a constant refrain when anyone is discussing accessibility: accessible Web site design equals GOOD Web site design. The qualities that make your site accessible to visitors with disabilities increase its overall usability for all visitors and make it more search engine friendly.
Yes, search engine spiders like ugly pages, but the pages don't have to be ugly to succeed. You can create a navigation structure that is attractive and appealing to all visitors. Even if you're sure that accessibility doesn't matter because you'll never have a blind visitor - you can certainly hope to have a search engine spider visit!
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