Hidden Content with "clip"

[zeepartner]

Hi

We're relaunching a site with a Drupal 7 CMS. Our web agency has hidden content on it and they say it's for Accessibility (I don't see the use myself, though). Since they ask for more cash in order to remove it, the management is unsure. So I wanted to check if anyone knows whether this could hurt us in search engines.

There is a field in the HTML where you can skip to the main content:

Skip to main content

The corresponding CSS comes here:

.element-invisible{position:absolute !important;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);clip:rect(1px,1px,1px,1px);}

#skip-link a,#skip-link a:visited{position:absolute;display:block;left:0;top:-500px;width:1px;height:1px;overflow:hidden;text-align:center;background-color:#666;color:#fff;}

The crucial point is that they're hiding the text "skip to main content", using clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px), which shrinks the text to one pixel. So IMO this is hiding content. How bad is it?

PS: Hope the source code is sufficient. Ask me if you need more. Thx!

[EGOL]

I would be really really really really mad if they did this to me.

they say it's for Accessibility

This is such BS...  (they know they are full of BS and they are so dumb that they think they can make you believe that it is chocolate)

Since they ask for more cash in order to remove it

Weasels!

[zeepartner]

thanx for confirming EGOL... yup, they are indeed crooks, but the contract was set-up quite badly. At least I could get them to add the clause that the website should use "semantic markup". so I hope i can kick their behinds with this instead of pay for a decent website!

[zeepartner]

..although I should add that it is indeed normal to have the possibility to skip content for visually impaired users (an accessibility organisation confirmed this). I'm just not sure what the best practice to do it is and I seriously don't like reducing content to 1 pixel.