Accessibility and shortcuts in pages - html

Question

Hello to the community!
I'm currently trying to enhance a website with good accessibility practices.
I have some concerns about a page that lists a huge amount of repeated results blocks, each having 5 links.
When navigating with the keyboard, jumping from one block to the other requires 5 tabs, which is really painful. So I thought about a hidden select dropdown that creates anchor links to the right block.
The select works like a charm, but has some usability or design issues:
If hidden, this makes an "empty" tab for sighted users.
I tried to totally hide it but when focused, the options are force-shown by the browser. This makes weird behaviour for sighted users if they accidentally open it (via a tab, seen on first point).
I tried to push it out of the viewport (left:-999px or via div overflow hidden) but Chrome then makes it unselectable.
Showing it from the start makes the design ugly. (Having a solo select in the middle of the page is not really friendly.)
And overall, I try as much as possible to keep the page light and sustainable and avoid, as much as possible full JS features.
What is your opinion about this? Do you have any other ideas that would fit? Any insight would be invaluable!
Thank you!
--- EDIT ---
I added here the global structure of the results list (I don't go in details but main repeated elements are here):
<section>
<h2> Nb of results + query </h2>
<!-- first idea : add a select here -->
<ul>
<li>
<!-- second idea : add hidden link here with focusable switched -->
<h3>
<a> Result name</a>
</h3>
<p> description </p>
<a> link 1</a>
<a> link 2</a>
<a> link 3</a>
<a> link 4</a>
</li>
<!-- repeating this li more than 10 times -->
</ul>
<!-- pagination goes here -->
</section>
<aside>
<!-- aside content -->
</aside>

Answer 1

As you have seen yourself, having form fields or dropdowns hidden and be shown on focus isn't a good idea, as it is suceptible to create functional bugs or unwanted visual effects.
Additionally, it isn't likely to be of much help. Screen reader users aren't tab-only users. I'm a screen reader user myself, and we have much more efficient ways to go to the information we are interested in than just repeatedly press tab (read further below).
Only big beginners do that.
Tab-only users are more likely to be sighted. They may benefit from the dropdown, but of course only if it is always visible.
For screen reader users, I would rather recommand adding the appropriate tagging in order to group the items:
There are several approaches to do that:
Use headings H1-6
Use <article>, <section>, another tag of that sort that automatically creates landmarks, or use ARIA to create landmarks yourself.
Use lists, definition lists and appropriately nest
Screen readers provide special shortcuts to navigate heading by heading or landmark to landmark. In fact we can, and we abuse of that whenever we can, use those shortcuts to quickly skip blocks we aren't interested in.
This little list above is by order of preference. Headings are better than landmarks because landmarks have been added more recently, and thus many of use are still used to look for headings first.
Nested lists are less good because it's harder to skip uninteresting parts, but it's still better than nothing if you have no solution to properly add headings or landmarks.
Look at Google search results as an example. Each result is an heading.
If the heading says everything and tilt immediately, it's also a link we can directly click on. If we aren't sure, we can read the description just below or access to additional options. If we aren't interested in the result, we can just press the shortcut to go to the next heading and so we have quickly skipped that result we aren't interested in.

Answer 2

Not sure what you mean by 'results blocks', but tabbing past repeated navigation on every page is a familiar nuisance in the a11y game.
Some kind of hidden 'skip to main content' feature, which appears as one of the first tab stops (before the navigation) is a very common solution to this kind of problem. Do a web search for 'accessibility skip to main' and you will find many suggestions. Yes, you'll probably need a little javaScript to focus and reveal the hidden link.
If you have non-interactive content on the page, screen reader users have special tricks to reach it quickly without all that tabbing. You could also consider using landmark roles or even custom keyboard shortcuts to navigate within the document.
If you are worried (point 2) that sighted users will get to see an ugly widget when they accidentally press Tab, then... make it beautiful.