Designers - don’t remove link outlines!
The other day I hurt my wrist and found that using my mouse was painful. No problem I thought, I can just use the keyboard. That proved out harder than I’d ever imagined!
The BBC News web site is inaccessible
I loaded up the BBC News web site as I do every morning and started tapping the TAB key to get the technology section (my favourite!). It was then I discovered that their web team had removed the dotted link outline you normally see when the link is in “focus” or “active”. As a result I was unable to use the BBC news site at all.
Many designers remove link outlines
All that day I suddenly started to notice more and more sites when link outlines had been removed. There’s definitely a trend for web/graphic designer sites to remove them, such as http://netmag.co.uk and http://www.forwebdesigners.com/, but most of the bigger players such as Yahoo UK and Google UK are perfectly accessible via keyboard.
Browser support
Assuming a designer hasn’t removed link outlines, the different browsers treat them differently.
I normally use Firefox for everyday use and that defaults to showing link outlines, as does IE7/8 (I’ve forgotten about IE6!).
In Safari (Win) it’s turned off by default - see Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Press tab to highlight each item on a web page to change it.
Opera has it’s own method of keyboard navigation involving F9 to focus the page then SHIFT+Left/Right/Up/Down - it didn’t take long to get used to, even with one hand!
Designers - don’t do it!
Yes I know some designers hate these dotted outlines because you think it “ruins” your design, but what’s more important, your vanity or potential customers? Let’s face it, if a prospective and lucrative client couldn’t navigate your site they’d go elsewhere and you’d be kick yourself for missing out!
Footnote: I have emailed the BBC’s accessibility team about this problem, and I’ll update this post if I get a reply.
Share |
