I believe as more sites take
this approach on board, it will become more prevalent to these users of
what the links do.
I'd agree with that. Additional two points:
- even if the user doesn't understand what they are, and decides to skip them (no pun intended), it doesn't significantly degrade their user experience compared to other sites; what I'm trying to say is: it's a bonus, an extra feature, icing on the cake that many large sites don't necessarily have yet...but it's not an essential part. Even if the user ignores it, the site remains as usable as the one without skip links;
- be careful not to take the comment of a single user to signify a whole section of the audience; of course, it's a comment we need to take on board, but it can only be a truly useful comment that actually dramatically influences our design decisions if an overwhelming number of users make it - in the same way that we wouldn't necessarily take any single sighted user's comments as an imperative (hey, I don't like navigation on the left, but I prefer it on the top).
That's not to say that it's not an interesting observation. Just to clarify: I'm not trying to belittle the original thread starter's message...just playing devil's advocate and making sure this doesn't cause a knee-jerk wave from less pragmatic developers.
Patrick H. Lauke -- _____________________________________________________ re�dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com
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