WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Accessible accordion menus

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Mar 6, 2009 12:15PM

Ritz, Courtney L. wrote:
>
> Thanks for the examples, and I'm sorry to have stirred up something
here.
> (grin)

Nah, it's all good. 'Twas a 'full exchange' a week or three ago, but it's
all good. To Al and Seth - peace! (Seth, I am swamped today, but will
respond to your question more fully when I have a chance - but I will
respond)

>
> I think the reason the developer went with this accordion menu was
because
> the customer (my organization) wanted a less cluttered page. So the
extra
> info wouldn't be displayed until one of the main menu items was
selected.
> But I would think that there are so many other simpler ways of achieving
> this. I'd almost rather see a separate HTML page for each section than
a
> huge script-heavy page that expands all its menus on that same page..
That's
> just my opinion as a user, but I may well be behind the times on that.

The big takeaway is that developers (and their task masters) need to
*really* think about what they are doing. Your idea is certainly along
the lines of how I would counsel a client or manager, but I also
understand that there are competing voices around any table. For me, the
key point you have identified is that the menu would be used to mitigate
visual clutter, to which I ask, "...and the audio clutter?..."

JF