The only research on this was on a tiny number of screen reader users (18 as I recall) and they had a very slight bias towards haing the navigation first. However, there were differences between people of differing ability. Experienced users tended to just deal with whatever was thrown at them, whereas less-experienced users had a strong preference for having the navigation first because that's what they were used to.
We have not explicitly tested this, but such a site came up during one of our public JAWS demonstrations. The screen reader user (who is highly proficient) didn't like it at all. It took him a while to figure out what was going on, and it was a struggle even after he did. A lot of people spout opinions on this, but it is all conjecture, and most of the people making assertions in favour of having content first have no experience of user testing. People expect sites to behave the way they always have done, so before we go changing the source order I would want to see a credible study and a significant bias in favour of change. Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Lecoat Sent: 09 October 2007 22:15 To: Web Standards Group Subject: [WSG] source order Hi there; I'm currently laying down the markup for a site and have been pondering whether to put page content above navigation in the source. I often read that this is a good idea, and that makes perfect sense to me as long as there are skip links so that people can reach the navigation easily, but I recently read an article at usability.com.au that would seem to indicate that few users of screen readers expect this to be the case. Is there a prevailing wisdom in this matter? Content first? Or navigation first? Cheers; -- Rick Lecoat ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
