WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: building accessible javascript accordions?

for

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Aug 2, 2013 2:40AM

Hi Bryan,

I see your point, I guess I'm trying to work out how a user would know
what they have encountered (imagine getting to a site the first time),
and therefore how they should interact with it. Both of your scenarios
start off as a bunch of links (which may have aria-pressed or
expanded), but act quite differently.
Tab and arrows work differently in each case, how does a user know what to do?

Steve: I'm not sure what you mean by accordion menus vs content? I
think it would be worth testing an ARIA example before concluding
anything, if it is still problematic then moving the keyboard focus to
the newly opened content would probably overcome that issue.

Roger: Good point, it seems like there could be an equivalent to 4.1.2
under the "understandable" principle in WCAG for this, or, perhaps it
is something for the UA guidelines instead?

My concern at the moment is that it's very easy for developers to
(rightly or wrongly) use ARIA markup at several levels, from easy-wins
like landmarks, through minor uses of things like has-poppup, to the
full design patterns.

Firstly, there doesn't seem to be much guidance on 'how much' ARIA to
use for different cases (although I might be missing something, please
let me know!). For example, when Patrick pointed to the accordion
example, I fell into the trap of thinking I should use the full tabs
design pattern. (No criticism Patrick, I fell for it!)

Secondly, there doesn't seem to be a way of signalling to users when
the (current) standard keyboard controls change. This is especially an
issue for keyboard-only sighted users who use up/down to scroll the
screen, and screen readers where up/down arrows are used for browsing.
It isn't such an issue for VoiceOver users as the browse controls use
modifier keys.

Cheers,

-Alastair