With same navigation on 2 places in every page, one is in dropdown and again is in left sider bar will it create difficulties for screen reader user?

Question

If i have same navigation on 2 places in every page , one is in dropdown and again is in left sider bar will it create difficulties for screen reader user?

Answer 1

It shouldn't be an issue. Assuming the drop down is a combo box there won't be duplicate text spoken since screen readers only read the selected item in a combo box by default not the entire list of items. I find links are the best way for me to navigate a frequently used page since most screen readers have the ability to generate a list of links, and I can use first letter navigation to get to where I need to go instead of cycling through a drop down with lots of choices most of which I probably don't care about.

Answer 2

Short answer, NO. Longer answer, it will be redundant for the listener. The reader will present the page in document order, not rendered order, so you can use the CSS positioning to arrange that one copy, the less useful copy to a reader user, will occur last.

Answer 3

You might like to add a "skip to content" link as the first focusable element on the page to let people jump past all the navigation if it's very long or repetitive.