The Kyle File

I’m experimenting with adding a share button to my posts, which should make it easier to share them on your favorite social network. I’m currently trying the share button from Add to Any, which allows both sharing and bookmarking on many networks from a single button. Other than the fact that my post title only shows up correctly if you click the button from the post’s page, it seems to work quite well.

A tip for screen reader users

I noticed that nothing seems to happen if you press enter on the link that says “Share it.” The solution to this problem has so far only been tested with Orca and Firefox 4.x, but you should be able to press enter on the link, press control-home to get to the top of the page, and then press enter again. From there you will be able to tab to the link for the network you want and press enter to go to its share page. The text box will already be filled in with the link, and usually the title of the post. If you click a share button on the front page, however, you will probably want to replace the blog title with the title of the post or whatever text you like. Let me know in the comments if this works on other screen readers/browsers or if you find another solution that works better for you. If not, I’ll look for another share button that will work better in more situations. I feel that a share button of some kind is a good thing, but I don’t want to sacrifice the accessibility of my blog to have one.

Update

I found a faster solution for navigating the pop-up menu for Add to Any. I have changed my screen reader tips to reflect the new key sequence. I also looked at Add This, which is supposed to be the world’s most popular share button, but I couldn’t properly make it work using a screen reader, so it looks as though Add to Any is indeed the best choice.