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Re: Accessibility of responsive, repositioned sidebars?

for

From: Lovely, Brian (CONT)
Date: Oct 26, 2016 7:18AM

Going from side by side on desktop to one above the other on mobile is an improvement over pinch zooming a miniature of the desktop version. If the top to bottom order of the mobile version matches the top to bottom, left to right order of the desktop I don't think there's any problem.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Robert Fentress
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 8:45 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessibility of responsive, repositioned sidebars?

Bummer. Nobody has an opinion, or was I just not clear in my explanation of the issue?

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Robert Fentress < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> Anybody got opinions on the accessibility of responsive designs where
> a secondary menu appears as a column to the right of the main content
> on desktop breakpoints, but, on mobile, the menu appears above the
> main content, perhaps in a disclosure widget of some sort? In both
> cases, the DOM order has the menu before the main content, with the
> visual changes being accomplished using CSS.
>
> From a design perspective, the fact that the main content dominates
> visually on desktop is probably good and making the menu easier to get
> to by preceding the content on mobile makes sense (though it gets
> complicated when you consider ease of access and hand position). My
> question, though is how bad it is that the DOM order now does not
> match the tab order for keyboarders? Certainly, this is not an
> uncommon pattern on the web these days. Perhaps, it would not terribly violate user expectations.
>
> Beyond the tab order, simply having the visual order not match the DOM
> order appears to be a no-no for various reasons, based on "C27: Making
> the DOM order match the visual order"
> <https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/C27.html>. However, this is but
> one sufficient condition for meeting the related success criterion,
> 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence
> <https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-content-structure-separation-sequence>.
> C27 says:
>
> "If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing
> this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success
> criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this
> technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance."
>
>
> So, it seems ambiguous to me.
>
> Would it be better to actually move the content with JavaScript at
> smaller breakpoints so the DOM order matches the visual order? That
> strikes me as inelegant (though less so as matchMedia
> <http://caniuse.com/#feat=matchmedia>; gains ground) and more likely to
> break. It may also confuse users who move between devices.
>
> What do you folks think about the relative advantages and
> disadvantages of various approaches?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Best,
> Rob
>
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