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resolving conflict between JAWS and key-press events for navigating large drop-down menus

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From: Michael Tangen
Date: Aug 22, 2014 1:39PM

I have been toiling over this for weeks now, researching solutions that
others have developed for fully keyboard-navigable menus (both for sited
users that have physical impairments and for non-sighted users that rely on
assistive technology such as JAWS). I have a drop-down menu script
<http://designbymichael.com/test/menu/>; that I've built for our state
agencies at the State of Minnesota and it works quite well....but I am
having one problem: JAWS has reserved both the use of arrow keys and the
space bar...and this is a problem from my perspective. While those keys do
offer the user certain abilities, it does restrict my ability to allow a
user to navigate through complex menu systems with arrow keys or to toggle
the display of submenus. If there's one thing that state government are
known for is vast layers of navigation to traverse through — and I'm trying
to alleviate that a little.

The example menu I hyperlinked below allows you to navigate through the
entire menu one of two ways: using arrow keys to drill down through the
menus and traverse back up again, or using a combination of the tab and
shift-tab keys to navigate and the spacebar to toggle the visibility (and
accessibility) of submenus. It works fine when you are just using a browser
without JAWS or on the Mac if you use Safari along with VoiceOver.
Furthermore with VoiceOver and Safari, you can navigate through the menu
with either the arrow keys or the tab keys with space bar to toggle
subnavigation visibility.

So I'm at a loss as what to do for JAWS users. What keyboard event can I
use to toggle the display of submenus without conflicting with keyboard
shortcuts that are reserved by JAWS? My requirements:


- Submenus must be hidden when not activated or needed, largely so the
screen reader doesn't read dozens and dozens of links that the user may
have no interest in hearing
- Intuitive means of navigating through complex trees of navigation
(arrow keys and/or (shift) tab keys)
- If arrow keys are not available to the end user (I'm looking at you
JAWS), an intuitive key choice to toggle the visibility of a submenu.

I've taken all the known steps to ensure accessibility, but I'm at a loss
with the conflict of what keys JAWS has assumed for itself with what keys
are commonly used for navigational purposes.

Thoughts?

Test menu: http://designbymichael.com/test/menu/

- Michael