Skipping Repetitive Navigation Links

General comments

Web developers routinely place a host of routine navigational links at a standard location - often across the top, bottom, or side of a page. It is a trivial matter for the nondisabled visitor, once having seen those links, to skip over them when returning to a Web page simply to view the contents of that particular page. However, for those who use screen readers or other types of assistive technologies, it can be a tedious and time-consuming chore to wait for the assistive technology to work through and announce each of the standard navigational links before getting to the actual page content.

To alleviate this problem, when repetitive navigational links are used, a mechanism must be provided for users to skip repetitive navigational links. One way to do this is with an appropriately labelled (with an alt tag) invisible (transparent one pixel by one pixel) image at the very top of the page that serves as a link to skip to the beginning of the actual page content.

Example

On this page you will find the following code that allows a user to skip the navigational link and go directly to the main content of the page.

[Immediately after the Body Tag]

<a href="#MainContent">
<img src="Hidden.gif" width="5" height="50"
alt="skip to Main Content" align="left"
border="0"></a>

[The "Hidden.gif" is a transparent graphic that is not visible to the sighted visitor]

[Just prior to the main content]

<a name="MainContent"></a>

Department of Commerce Web Advisory Council (WAC)
U.S. Department of Commerce

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Page last updated October 12, 2010