tabindex

[rabbitsfeat]

To better illustrate my question about tabindex please visit the site I'm currently building, which is temporarily up on the following web address:

http://www.jeremyhodge.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

If you go to the Contacts section and hit the TAB key you'll see that I currently have the tabindex set up so that you can jump straight to the form. Is this how it should be? I've just read a web accessibility checklist that states:

Be sure tab order is logical using tabindex, if necessary.(If your HTML is in the proper order, then using tabindex isn't necessary).

I'm not sure if my HTML is in the proper order?

Also if you click to go to the gallery page, would it make sense to have the tabindex set so that you can tab straight to the gallery categories i.e. mammals, birds, landscapes etc.

I'd really appreciate any help given with this.

[Mittineague]

The nav links appear first on that page but tab to after the form. IMHO it would be best to have a "skip" to the form, with the nav links first in the tab sequence.

As to "right order", as long as you aren't using CSS to float or absolutely position containers, chances are the mark-up is "in order". Try viewing the page without CSS and see if the order (not the style) is different.

*Using Opera's view->style->user mode, I see the form comes before the "Contact Details", so the order is "off" (although only a problem if someone is tabbing to the email link - which comes last the tab sequence).

[rabbitsfeat]

Rather than have Skip to content on the gallery page and then Skip to form on the contacts page I think I'd be better off and it'd be less confusing to just put Skip navigation on every page.

What do you think?

I'll also change the tabindex order by putting the form after the other contact links i.e. the email link.

[Mittineague]

Yes, it would be confusing (inconsistent) to have "skip to form" and "skip to content". My thinking was that the form is the content for that page, but this is not strictly true (B is a subset of A, but B is not equal to A).