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Re: Accordion semantics?

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From: Detlev Fischer
Date: Jun 19, 2014 10:19AM

On 19 Jun 2014, at 15:59, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> With a
> standard horizontal tab you will always land in the content of one of the
> tab panels.

Hi Jon,
If I am not mistaken, whether tabbing lands you in a tab panel or expanded accordion tab will depend on whether there are any focusable elements in it (native or made focusable via tab index).
Users not getting or understanding the initial announcement of the tab panel role and arrow navigation behaviour may in both cases have trouble noticing and accessing hidden content - which is why we see so many hybrid versions of tabbed content on web pages supporting both tabbing and arrowing.

There is one difference though: the default state of accordions is usually that content is hidden while horizontal tab panels show the first tab by default. Having said all that, I am quite in favour of not using tab list for accordions. I just would't go so far as calling such an implementation wrong.

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Detlev Fischer
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