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Re: accessible tree menus

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Feb 27, 2009 12:50PM

Seth Kane wrote:
>
> Here is a GREAT example of an Accessible Dropdown Navigation that uses
> suckerfish or a version of it.
>
> http://www.harvard.edu/

*IF* you think that 36 links visually hidden but none-the-less present in
the source code represents an accessible solution, sure. (I don't)

Thing is, those links are "compacted" to avoid visual clutter, but for
non-seeing users, they still need to put up with the audio clutter.

That 'simple' home-page has 62 unique links presented to the end user.
This represents a usability barrier that involves cognitive over-load not
only for the non-sighted user, but for anyone who has difficulty
remembering or retaining long lists of data (here are 62 navigation
choices - I will read all of them out to you and then you tell me which
one you want, OK? Here goes: link 1: "featured stories", link 2: "more
news", link 3: "Harvard in the world", link 4: "main navigation", ... link
17: "Graduate School", link 18: "Law", link 19: "Medical".... link 37:
"General Info"... Link 61: "Accessibility"...)

Ya, accessible...

JF