WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Dropdown menus?

for

From: Travis Roth
Date: Mar 17, 2010 10:45AM


Mike Moore wrote:
"I have found these to work quite well. Having them triggered with an
onChange event can be a bit of a processing issue when the user works with a
keyboard and uses the down arrow to move through the list. The onChange
event is triggered each time the user moves to the next selection in the
list."

Under normal circumstances, opening a dropdown that has an onChange event
handler with Alt+Down Arrow before arrowing through the list keeps the
onChange event from firing until the dropdown is closed/set with Alt+Up
Arrow.
Unfortunately it seems many users do not know to do this when they
experience a dropdown with onChange.
If the onChange event does not force focus to the next control automatically
it helps a lot for when the user doesn't use the extra keystroke.