The National Cancer Institute's Office of Communication has been doing some excellent practical work lately on accessibility and usability, and they address this matter in one of their tips:
http://www.usability.gov/web_508/tip2.html
Invisible links meet the needs of screenreaders. They are accessible and usable for screenreader users and they don't detract from usability for able-bodied users (people whom a disabled friend describes as "temporarily able-bodied").
Visible links enhance accessibility for users with motor impairments, who can see the screen but must use the tab key to get to the links in the body.
Consider this page, here at webproworld.com. It takes 42 "tabs" to get past the horizontal bar ("Chat," "Link to Us," and the rest) to reach the link for the first category in the left nav bar. And 92 tabs to get to the "Close Tags" link. Pretty annoying if you can't use the mouse.
But for mouse users, the visible Skip Navigation link is a distraction and confusing, reducing usability for that segment of the population.
Perhaps you'll follow the NCI's third approach:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by National Cancer Institute
You may even decide that you want to set an example by using a visible bypass link, so that the general public will start becoming accustomed to this accessibility convention. To explain its purpose to non-disabled users, you could use the TITLE attribute of the A tag to provide additional information.
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If you look at their page, you'll see they use an invisible link, and place it before their logo. An invisible link is probably good for that page, since there are only a few links before the main content. They put the navigation bar on the right side.