While observing the source of the Swiss airlines website, I noticed the use of hidden text. I first looked it up on Google and found many SEO-related benefits but also the risk of negative scoring in search engine algorithms.The text being hidden on Swiss.com though doesn't look SEO related, e.g.:<h2 class=is-visuallyhidden>navigation</h2><h2 class=is-visuallyhidden>Skiplinks</h2>So my question is what is the purpose of hidden text if not SEO trickery? Could it be accessibility related?
Purpose of hidden text in website
seo;website design
Text/content is usually hidden for one of two reasons:That content should not be displayed until a certain event occurs (i.e. a user performs an action like clicking on a link or pressing a button).That content is only necessary for users who have special needs (e.g. accessibility).I didn't review swiss.com but based on the snippets you posted it looks like that content is hidden for accessibility purposes. Skiplinks are handy for screen readers but not so much for normal human beings. Hiding them from visual users makes sense while leaving them available to users who can take advantage of them to reach content that may have normally been difficult for them to reach.