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Re: ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Feb 13, 2013 9:05AM

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 8:48 AM, Chris Rodriguez wrote:

> Does anyone have insight as to why this is the case and suggestions or
> recommendations for making it work?

First, thanks for bringing this discussion to the mailing list.
Twitter's 140 characters just doesn't work for such things.

Adding ARIA roles does not change the interactivity or keyboard
functionality. It simply changes the information that is presented to
a screen reader user. By indicating that it is a menu, the user can
expect a certain keyboard interactivity (e.g., arrow keys to
navigate), but you still most program all of that keyboard
interactivity. The ARIA spec outlines interactivity patterns for you
to implement - http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#aria_ex

But to take a step back, it may be first useful to ensure that an ARIA
menubar is actually appropriate. This is not typically appropriate for
web site navigation - it's intended for a web application's menu bar
(think "File...", "Edit...", etc.). A good example of such a menu bar
implementation can be found at
http://hanshillen.github.com/jqtest/#goto_menubar

If a menu bar isn't actually what you're building, then ARIA may not
provide a perfect solution. Adding aria-expanded might provide a cue
to the user to expand/collapse the menu.

Jared