Contents link fixed to the bottom of the page hides focussed element

[fofr]

When tabbing through links on a page, the contents bar can hide the currently focused link, making it hard to know what is selected. This is a significant accessibility problem for keyboard only users.

A similar problem was spotted by the Modelling and Services team when they visited DAC. They updated the design of the step by step bar to avoid the bug.

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/european-metal-recycling-metal-waste-recycling-merger-inquiry

cc @andysellick

[andysellick]

Our observation at DAC was that sticky elements that can obscure page content like this can be a headache for keyboard users. We had a sticky element across the top of the page that was causing the same problem when keyboard users tabbed up the page. We've since abandoned the idea of sticky elements.

I think the main problem here will be if we were to remove the stickiness of the contents link, what's the alternative?

1. Link is not sticky, would just sit at the bottom of the page
2. Link is sticky, but we take off the background and position it in front of the (mostly empty) right hand column (would need to decide what to do on mobile)
3. Sticky link is removed but contents link is inserted using JS at each heading in the page content
4. Something else?

[NickColley]

@andysellick are there any updates for this?

When we implemented this feature we didn't do any testing, this was a requirement to have a shared side navigation, has that changed?

Would be good to see if we can fix this, maybe we could leave it inline in the page rather than fixed as it was before?

[andysellick]

@NickColley nothing's changed as far as I'm aware, and I'm not aware of anyone looking into it. I agree, it needs to go, but I don't know of anyone who has capacity at the moment. Maybe one for firebreak.

[vanitabarrett]

@NickColley @andysellick I think this slipped off our radar a bit - I've just created a Trello card for this in the navigation team's backlog. Hopefully we can take a look at this next quarter.

[NickColley]

@vanitabarrett thanks!