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WebAIM-Forum Digest, Vol 95, Issue 13

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From: Chris Rodriguez
Date: Feb 14, 2013 6:52AM

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 2:00 PM, < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Re: ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use (Jared Smith)
> 2. Re: ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use (Gunderson, Jon R)
> 3. Re: List of University Directors of Disability Student
> Services (Lucy Greco)
> 4. Re: List of University Directors of Disability Student
> Services (Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E])
> 5. Re: List of University Directors of Disability Student
> Services (Chagnon | PubCom)
> 6. Re: List of University Directors of Disability Student
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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jared Smith < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Cc:
> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:05:08 -0700
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use
> 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
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Gunderson, Jon R" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Cc:
> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:07:14 +0000
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] ARIA menubar/menuitem keyboard use
> 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
>


Thank you both. I did some research and what I'm building isn't an
application so using the menubar role turned out to not be a good idea. I
went with the listmenu and menuitem roles which is semantic for the
purposes of the nested list subnavigation. However, my only remaining
question is how to announce to the screen reader that sections can be
expanded? Currently, you can Tab through every item in the list, but using
controls (such as VoiceOver's Control + Option keys) only jumps to the high
level items, not the child items.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Chris


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