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Re: ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use

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From: Gunderson, Jon R
Date: Feb 13, 2013 9:07AM

You must add the keyboard event handlers to add the keyboard support, some examples:

http://oaa-accessibility.org/examples/role/85/

http://hanshillen.github.com/jqtest/#goto_menubar

ARIA does not add any keyboard behavior, it only provides descriptive information to accessibility APIs when that element has keyboard focus.

You should review:
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/#kbd_general_within

Jon



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Chris Rodriguez
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 9:48 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use

Hello,

I'm working with a vertical style subnavigation menu that I'd like to make keyboard navigable. It functions like an accordion - clicking/pressing Enter on one level will "expand" it's child pages. Currently, I can Tab through the menu and navigate to each element, but screen readers aren't aware there are nested lists under each top-level section.

It was brought to my attention to try the ARIA role="menubar" and "menuitem". I've implemented this and the screen readers understand the items are part of a menu, but I cannot use the keyboard arrow keys to move around as I'd like.

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

Thanks in advance,
Chris