Does the global header provide a way to skip directly to the main content?

Goal

Make it easy for people using assistive technology (AT) to get to the main content of the page.

Why this matters

Without skip links, people using the keyboard to reach the main content of the page, or people using a screen reader to listen to the content of the page, must experience to your entire global header to reach the main content.

Most websites purposefully repeat the same global header on every page, with few variations. The navigation links are not the content the user came to the page to read. Having to manually skip past them becomes really annoying really quickly.

Providing a “skip to main” link resolves this issue by immediately moving the user to the content they do want to engage with.

How to implement

Review the “Skip Navigation” links tutorial on WebAIM.

How to test

• Tab through the page. Is one of the first links a link to skip navigation? Does activating that link take you to the main content?
• Is the link visible when the user tabs to it?