A 'go to text version' link certainly won't hurt, but our experience of user testing is that they are rarely used. In fact we did a test project last week where the site had a text version, an audio version and a built-in magnifier, but only one of the three users (who was a screen reader user) even noticed any of them. However, despite having some difficulties with the site he never tried the text-only version.
Maybe this is because in the past text-only versions were maintained (or not) separately and often had outdated or incomplete content. Obviously it is possible to generate both versions from the same content but few sites do this. We also came across a site that had no fewer that six 'skip to' links such as 'skip to main navigation', 'skip to sub navigation', 'skip to main content' etc. The whole thing was so verbose that they really needed a 'skip past all these skip links' link. The point being that screen reader users benefit from pages being as terse as possible (i.e. less to remember), and that sometimes they are hindered by features that have been added to help them. With regard to 'title' attributes, by default these are not read by most screen readers. Some have an option that allows the user to read them but that's little use because the user has no way of knowing if an element has a 'title' attribute except by trial and error, and it's too much hard work to keep checking. My email program mangled my previous emails today, so in case anyone missed it, we're running a free JAWS demo on 27 November. Full details and booking form at www.accessibility.co.uk/free_jaws_demo.htm. Steve Green Director Test Partners Ltd / First Accessibility www.testpartners.co.uk www.accessibility.co.uk -----Original Message----- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bruce Sent: 02 November 2006 23:28 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Articles/reasearch/experience of screen readers I have been following this with great interest. What I have been considering (I know its been covered before) is putting a link at the top of the page, go to text version Go to menu I would think that screen reader users would find that a good addition to be able to read an article in text only, and a shortcut to scan articles which also have brief title tags in addition to descriptive titles. In my design content comes first already... Bruce Prochnau BKDesign Solutions ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
