Comments on: The shelf life of a skip link

By: iheni

iheni — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:08:18 +0000

Paul, don’t be dispirited, in fact the emphasis on that sentence is on the “..you can start using HTML5 now”.
Yes the spec is evolving and changing and yes they are yet to write all the test cases necessary but this doesn’t mean that HTML5 can’t be touched until all this work is 100% complete.
Many people are using HTML5 now (see http://html5gallery.com/) and are troubleshooting their way using it (see http://html5doctor.com/).

HTML5 is commonly referred to as ‘paving the cowpathes” and if we want to draw parallels to WCAG 2.0 I’d say that much of what went into WCAG 2.0 was what responsible developers were already doing to make their sites accessible.
So don;t feel you cant start working with it now, in fact now is a great time to get started so you can get familiar with what’s happening and how to advance your own websites.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:13:36 +0000

Hi Heni

Excellent read, though a bit dispirited by this snippet:

“That said, while the specification wont be finished until 2022 you can start using HTML5 now.”
That must rival WCAG 2.0 for gestation periods…

By: iheni

iheni — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:40:28 +0000

Hi Grant, I’m with you on the main content identifier too. It’ll be interesting to see how HTML5 and it’s development pans out and how it affect skip links. It will take a long time for them to become redundant (if at all) especially as they are becoming increasingly common on sites. That said I’m looking forward to HTML itself having a solution to help page navigability without these additional hacks. It will hopefully mean that better accessibility even if the developer is less aware.

Let’s hope anyway!

By: Grant broome

Grant broome — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:31:57 +0000

Hi Heni, I Just wanted to chirp in and say I’m with Bruce on the main content identifier. I’m not up on HTML5, but it certainly seems to make sense to be able to identify the start of the main content it explicitly and seems a bit strange to me that this isn’t already the case.

I think skip to content will be with us for a good while yet as there are many, many, things that need to happen before they become redundant.

By: iheni

iheni — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:11:16 +0000

So it looks like we’re all thinking along similar lines which is interesting. This is really making me think about spec development (particularly HTML5) and how we can develop it so we can do away with as many of these hacks as possible. The less people have to learn about accessibility because it is reinforced in the spec the better. Nothing new there I guess…

Martin, thanks for pointing out your post on the XHTML Access module. I’d not thought about this and will do some digging. Good post BTW.