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Re: Accessibility of responsive, repositioned sidebars?

for

From: Asa Baylus
Date: Oct 26, 2016 9:54AM

Hi Robert,

I just went through this same issue. It's trivial to solve if you're using flexbox. With flexbox you can change the order without JS

Browser support is pretty decent these days

Just a thought and your browser support matrix may not allow for it

Asa

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 26, 2016, at 8:45 AM, Robert Fentress < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> 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
>>
> > > >