WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: accessibility of this drop down menu

for

From: Geof Collis
Date: May 6, 2010 8:54AM


Hi Bim

I'm all for low tech if it is inclusive of all disabilities, I mean
how can a drop down menu be called accessible if it excludes certain
disabilities.

cheers

Geof
At 06:11 AM 5/6/2010, you wrote:
>Hi Geof
>The problem with dropdown menus like the one in the example that Angela
>sent is that unless you can use a mouse, you can't reach any of the
>links apart from those at the top level. Unfortunately the solution
>that many web authors have used is a dropdown list that is completely
>keyboard navigable, but impossible to bypass, (the worst I've seen had
>160+ links in the navigation. That's 161 depressions of the tab key
>before you get to the main content, and that's on every page you visit.
>
>
>One solution is to use a menu according to the WAI-ARIA Authoring
>Practices 1.0 patterns, as suggested by claudia, but if your authoring
>skills aren't up to that, the low tech alternative is to ensure that the
>top level links lead to section main pages that contain the subordinate
>links.
>
>Bim
>
>