[Pydotorg-redesign] CSS Layout Reservoir

[Tim Parkin]

>> The examples worked fine for me in Safari.
>> In Lynx and Netscape 4, the margin content appeared below the main
>> body text.  That may be a problem if you expect your content to read
>> roughly left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
>
>That's easy enough to fix by putting the menu before the content in the
>HTML itself.

It would be of great benefit if possible, to have the main menu at the
bottom of the content and to provide a 'skip to navigation' link of some
sort at the top of the page. I have been told by the blind and partially
sighted users that I have had focus groups with, that the most annoying
thing is to have the menu read out on every page. The shortcut is
generally to offer a skip-menu feature which is ok but the best is to
have a 'skip to nav' with associated accesskey. I'll leave this one open
to debate as the html I've been building will work both ways. I've added
a reference regarding it from a very well thought of accessibility book
and also a link to Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Accessibility website.

Tim

http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_10_presenting_your_main_content_fir
st.html

Joe Clark - Building Accessible (p150)

"Visitors who cannot readily skip all those links must either page
through them (as with Lynx, a text-only browser), or move the cursor to
select each link in turn (as with some mobility-impaired people using
any kind of browser), or attempt to skip the links using software
commands, if that is even possible. But in doing so, visitors may skip
links they actually want along with those they do not.

As a veteran Lynx user, let me tell you how it works. When presented
with dozens of navigation links, I press the spacebar over and over
again to bypass them a screenful at a time. If the first link of any
resulting screenful happens to be a text field (e.g., a search box), I
have to move the cursor off the field with the Downarrow or Tab keys,
then keep on paging through the links. Or I can guess how many
screenfuls of links are present and skip beyond that screenful: Typing
5P (p for page) brings me to the fifth screenful.

But I have it easy. While some mobility-impaired people do in fact
repeatedly press the Tab key to move around a page, some people with
more severe disabilities use adaptive technology that runs through a
sequence of possible actions ("switch access").You have to wait until
the keyboard action comes up, then home in on the Tab key (which itself
could take many steps), then actuate it. How would you like to go
through that 99 times just to skip nagavation?
Then what if the link you really want is actually near the bottom of the
page?
How long would you put up with that, if you don't already?"