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Re: mouseover/hover and keyboard accessible expandablemenu?

for

From: deblist
Date: Nov 6, 2009 10:10AM

On Fri, 6 Nov 2009, Jared Smith wrote:
> 2. Program the menu to be technically keyboard/screen reader
> accessible. The problem with this approach is that there is no
> standard way of doing so. Do you open the menu with space or enter? Do
> the arrow keys expand/collapse the menu? Up and down or left and
> right? How are you to know if you can't see it? And again, hierarchy
> and semantics are nearly impossible to convey with such menus. Without
> standard controls, trying to make complex menus accessible is not
> likely to result in a good experience. It may be technically
> accessible, but effectively a usability nightmare.

it seems to me the appropriate solution to this is to propose
standard controls to the standards making bodies, not just say
"oh well, usability nightmare".

> The key here is getting users to the content in an efficient and
> effective way. We shouldn't try to force the same menu experience on
> them no more than we drag wheelchairs up the stairs in order to give
> them the same experience of getting to the second floor.

but if we want to see menu experience, we should have access to
it. For me, usable drop-down menus via keyboard provide a much
better browsing experience. I speak here not just as a web
programmer who is, like the rest of you, trying to solve these
problems, but as a disabled user with no mouse access.

Also remember that not all keyboard-only users are screenreader.
We should come up with solutions that provide a pleasurable
browsing experience both for sighted keyboard-only users and for
screenreader-using keyboard-only users. As long as we are doing
stretched metaphors here, saying "keyboard accessible drop-down
menus are a bad idea because they provide a bad screenreader
experience" is like saying "keyboard access to a non-screenreader
accessible page element is a bad idea."

-deborah