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Re: Inaccessible mega menu and WCAG2

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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Jan 16, 2015 10:47AM

Lynn, once a submenu is exposed, do you enter it on the next tab, or do you have to use the down arrow?

If it takes the down arrow—or anything other than tab—then you are probably all right. But if the submenu is exposed on tab, then the interface is technically accessible but probably not highly usable to sighted people who navigate with a keyboard pr keyboard equivalent. As you noted, those invisible links will confuse them.

In this case, if at all possible, I would do a usability test. Find several people who fit this profile and don't know the design. Then ask them to find several items that could be reached through the hidden-when-using-tabs level of the menus. And them have them find several items that are visible on the page but are beyond the megamenu in the tab order.

Have your doubters observe the test—remotely if possible; gagged and straightjacketed if necessary to keep them quiet.

See if any of the participants get confused. (My guess is that they all will.) If not, you're probably OK. If you want to be absolutely sure, have a few more people test the page. If you get up to 25 or 30 participants and still have not seen a participant encounter problems, then your design is probably OK.

If the audience can't use it for any reason, surely your organization would want to fix that. If that reason is in any way a hindrance for people with disabilities, I would at least say that it fails the related success criterion.

After all, accessibility isn't about creating paths that properly programmed robots can follow. It's about removing hindrances experienced by real people. If that hindrance is due to or exacerbated by a disability, then in my book the interface is inaccessible, even if I have to stretch a success criterion to designate it as such.

Cliff Tyllick

Sent from my iPhone
Although its spellcheck often saves me, all goofs in sent messages are its fault.

> On Jan 16, 2015, at 10:09 AM, Lynn Holdsworth < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Apologies - I lied :-)
>
> It *is* possible to get to a new page using the top menu links. And
> the new page contains all of the submenu items.
>
> But it's still confusing for keyboard users to be tabbing through a
> bunch of invisible links. So presumably 2.1.1 isn't pertinent here.
> But focus visible doesn't feel like quite the right fit.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> Thanks, Lynn
>
>> On 16/01/2015, Lynn Holdsworth < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Thanks everyone.
>>
>> No, it's not possible to open the menu or get to a different
>> destination by activating one of the links in the top menu.
>>
>> 2.1.1 looks like a good point to fail it on - thanks Patrick.
>>
>> I worked on a menu system for a while, and it functioned pretty much
>> exactly like native menus: left/right arrows move across the top or
>> open/close sub-submenus; down arrow opens a submenu or moves through
>> its options; Esc closes a submenu, etc., and I liked it a lot. But it
>> wasn't possible to create an implementation that worked across all
>> screenreaders. And we were never sure whether we should indicate that
>> an item could be expanded if pressing Enter moved the user to a
>> different page. So I'm very interested in this discussion and what you
>> all think.
>>
>> Best, Lynn
>>
>>> On 16/01/2015, Don Mauck < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>> I'd like to give my two cents for what it's worth. For me, I like the
>>> way
>>> menus and submenus currently work as it is the way most application menus
>>> work.
>>>
>>>