Michael: You’re not the only one with a non-white default background colour :). It’s quite startling how many sites forget it, which is why I mentioned it.
Kilian: The reason to leave the focus outline is that it adds an extra element rather than just colour, in the event that someone is only distinguishing links with colour rather than underline or whatever. It can also help distinguish links even when extra effort has gone in to highlight the links, and is what most users expect to be displayed as they tab around the page. I’m not suggesting all links should be blue and underlined, but given that this is there to help users and it’s not heinously ugly, there’s no real reason to remove it.
Mike: you’re right in that screen readers won’t read out the id’s, but this technique is not aimed at screen reader users – it’s intended to give users can see a bit of a boost. Screen reader users aren’t being specifically disadvantaged by not getting this information, as I mentioned in my comment above.
My intention with this article was to give some tips that are predominantly intended to help those who can see the page and who are often forgotten about because it’s easy to focus on those who entirely can’t see the page.
pixeldiva
Michael: You’re not the only one with a non-white default background colour :). It’s quite startling how many sites forget it, which is why I mentioned it.
Kilian: The reason to leave the focus outline is that it adds an extra element rather than just colour, in the event that someone is only distinguishing links with colour rather than underline or whatever. It can also help distinguish links even when extra effort has gone in to highlight the links, and is what most users expect to be displayed as they tab around the page. I’m not suggesting all links should be blue and underlined, but given that this is there to help users and it’s not heinously ugly, there’s no real reason to remove it.
Mike: you’re right in that screen readers won’t read out the id’s, but this technique is not aimed at screen reader users – it’s intended to give users can see a bit of a boost. Screen reader users aren’t being specifically disadvantaged by not getting this information, as I mentioned in my comment above.
My intention with this article was to give some tips that are predominantly intended to help those who can see the page and who are often forgotten about because it’s easy to focus on those who entirely can’t see the page.