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Re: First letter/number navigation for ARIA Listboxes, Menus, and Tabs

for

From: Gunderson, Jon R
Date: Aug 8, 2013 12:57PM

Here is a reference to the design patterns for using ARIA, including
suggested keyboard shortcuts:
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/#aria_ex


One of the uses of ARIA is to help users understand how to interact with a
widget using the keyboard.

If I go to a menu and can't use the arrow keys to navigate menu options,
it will be confusing to users.


Jon


On 8/8/13 1:33 PM, "Bryan Garaventa" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

>Actually I don't think discoverability would be a problem, since it
>simply
>matches current paradigms for these control types.
>
>For example, the ARIA Listbox literally sounds like a standard Select
>element when implemented, which also matches Windows Listbox control
>feedback on the desktop. When you are interacting with a standard Select
>element, you can do the same thing, press a letter or number to jump to
>the
>item that starts with that character.
>
>The same is true for the ARIA Menu, which matches the standard Windows
>Menu
>functionality, which you can see by right clicking the web page to open a
>context menu that literally provides the same type of feedback, as does a
>properly formed ARIA Menu. This can be seen by opening the File menu from
>any Windows application toolbar to hear the same, and all of these menus
>support single letter navigation. The only difference with the ARIA Menu,
>is
>that I programmed it to simply move focus instead of automatically
>activating the item, which I think is more intuitive for browsing.
>
>The goal is to make the ARIA Widget behave as closely as possible with
>the
>keyboard functionality of it's standard control counterpart. This will
>prevent confusion in the future, since screen reader users will likely
>never
>know that a simulated control is present, if it sounds exactly like a
>standard control of the same type. This is why matching keyboard
>functionalities is so important.
>
>The Tabs module is one exception where the looping arrow key navigation
>and
>first character keypress doesn't exist in Windows, but I see this as more
>of
>a beneficial optimization, and one that I wish Windows actually provided
>as
>well.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Alastair Campbell" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 1:29 AM
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] First letter/number navigation for ARIA Listboxes,
>Menus, and Tabs
>
>
>> Hi Bryan,
>>
>> Interesting, at first I thought it would over-ride default key
>> commands for Windows based screen readers, but it is only active once
>> the user has selected the widget.
>>
>> I imagine that would be very useful for often-used things like
>> Intranets, perhaps less so for public facing sites as discoverability
>> of that feature isn't easy without instructions?
>>
>> -Alastair
>> >> >> >
>>>