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Re: mouseover/hover and keyboard accessible expandablemenu?

for

From: Al Sparber
Date: Nov 6, 2009 11:15AM

From: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >

> On Fri, 6 Nov 2009, Al Sparber wrote:
>> The most accessible *and* usable menus of this kind are ones in which the
>> sub-menus are not available to keyboard or non-sighted people, but which
>> instead include links on the root items to "landing" pages, from which
>> links
>> in the relevant sub-menu are present in the flow of the document's
>> visible
>> content areas.
>
> As a hands-free (and therefore keyboard-only) disabled user
> myself, I strongly disagree with this. I very much prefer getting
> the same user experience that non-keyboard-only users have, which
> includes the drop-down menus. This is a fundamental principle of
> universal design!
>
> Getting shunted to landing pages for me is the accessible minimal
> acceptable solution, but it is certainly not the way I like to
> work.

Hi Deborah,

This is an issue that very few people can ever seem to agree on ;-)

Tell you what... try this test page:
http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/accessible/menu/

Imagine you are a regular visitor to this imaginary site and your objective
today is to access either of these 2 links on that page:

Objective 1: Test Page 1
Objective 2: Test Page 2

Note how many tab stops it takes for each.

Now try it on this page:
http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/accessible/menu/index2.htm

If you still disagree strongly, no problem. Everyone has a different
perspective - but we have done a very large amount of user testing on this
and our perspective is as I stated in my previous mail.

--
Al Sparber - PVII
http://www.projectseven.com
Dreamweaver Menus | Galleries | Widgets
http://www.projectseven.com/go/apm
An Accessible & Elegant Accordion