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Re: arrow key navigation in accessible menu

for

From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Dec 8, 2010 4:36PM

Adam, this sounds a lot like an issue we (mostly others; I did *some* advising and reviewing) solved with Drupal, the open-source content management system. We were dealing with arrow-key navigation through a series of "vertical tabs" -- labeled tabs down the left edge of the screen; clicking a tab revealed that tab's panel.

I don't know if an outsider would be able to follow the discussion, but in case it's helpful, you can find it at http://drupal.org/node/467296

FWIW.

Cliff

Cliff Tyllick
Usability assessment coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
<EMAIL REMOVED>


>>> On 12/8/2010 at 4:15 PM, in message < <EMAIL REMOVED> >, adam solomon < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
Thank you for all the replies. I agree with Jeevan that it is very
inconvenient to have to tab through a complex menu. On the other hand, ARIA
is still a draft, and is not supported by IE browsers many people are still
using. JAWS support is limited as you mentioned. In our case, the
development team needs accessibility approval of a menu which does not
support arrow key navigation. I don't feel that I can veto this on the
grounds that it does not comply with wcag. I have made it clear to them that
arrow key navigation is important to have, but not a deal breaker. No
filibuster on this one!

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Jeevan Reddy < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Hello Adam,
> Can you Access the Menu items in the desk top applications only with
> "Tab" key?
> Certainly you need to use "Tab" key to jump between menus, and Arrow keys
> help you to navigate between menu items which is currently in Focus.
> The same is applicable to Rich internet application Menu.
> For example if you are having hundred navigation links, Certainly you don't
> put all these links in the navigation, you'll catagorise them and place
> them
> in a Menu format.
> Now coming to Keyboard accessibility, when a user wants to Access the Third
> menu in the serial, he needs to use tab so many times.If you make the same
> similar to desk top, the user can get that with 3 tabs, and he can navigate
> the menu items using arrow keys.
>
> Now coming to JAWS 9.0 issue, it has lack of ARIA support(the techniques
> used to make rich internet applications Accessible).
> Thanks and Regards,
> Jeevan
> On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 5:57 PM, adam solomon
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:
>
> > Is arrow-key navigation necessary for an accessible menu?
> > To the best of my knowledge, arrow key navigation won't work with Jaws 9
> > because those keys are reserved for Jaws (correct me on this if I'm
> wrong).
> > If so, and if the answer to the first question is yes, what is the
> > solution?
> >
> > --
> > adam solomon
> > linkedin <http://il.linkedin.com/pub/adam-solomon/24/449/a4>;
> > blogix <http://adam.blogix.co.il/>;
> >