Confirmed.

If you use tables it wiil kill it on a sreen reader. Try this:

<ul class="navlinks">
  <li><a href="#">some link</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">some other link</a></li>
</ul>

then in your stylesheet:

.navlinks {
  list-style-type: none;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
}

It's a neat way to do it ;)

Nick

Great tip Nick!

Not only is that an elegant method, but there is a possibility of adding increased value to the links when spidered. SE spiders may assign greater weight to various page elements, headings for instance, <h1> almost certainly. If this is infact true, wouldn't it be logical to assume that LIST ITEMS might imply greater importance as well? Just speculation... I'm sure we will get some SEO opinions on this one! ;)

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: [w3.org]

10.5 Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render adjacent links distinctly, include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces) between adjacent links. [Priority 3]
Techniques for checkpoint 10.5

I assume that <BR> isn't printable, but must admit that I've been lax at times. I like Nick's approach, but would it work with the dumber screen readers?

Screen Reader? What's a screen reader and where can I find more information?

Screen readers are browsers that synthesize speech instead of creating a visual display - they let visually impaired users browse the web.

Here's a simulator:
[webaim.org...]

Nice.

Screen readers and text only browsers like Lynx are very important. Remember the trouble the Olympic site got into for not providing alt text?

For me, web design is often about preparing for stuff that will happen very little: like a blind user hitting a site. It's easy to accomadate, better for everyone and genrally makes for a better breed of web site.

Nick

Another link for screen reader information is www.section508.gov. I was looking through some of their online learning and there was a link to a screen reader simulation and also some examples of how they read pages. It was a real eye-opener for me.