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Re: drop down menus

for

From: Suzanne Ankerbrand
Date: Jul 31, 2003 6:56AM

Hi,
I have the same question concerning rollover menus. A new client is
insisting they want them. This is a large non-profit so they should
be concerned with accessibility. We informed them that rollvers are
not accessible and that many of them don't work with all browsers ...
they're still insisting. Their point is, if the top link in the
rollover menu links to the second level page where all the other
links that were in the rollover are listed anyway, they've met the
accessibility issue. The rollover will give those who can view it a
short cut ... if not, they just jump to the second level page. Any
feedback about that?

Thanks,
Suzanne




>On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, NutHouse Studios wrote:
>
>> I was wondering if it's possible to make drop down menus for navigation that
>> are accessible?
>
>Depends on what you mean by accessibility, but the practical answer is
>"no, and there's no need to". Dropdown menus for navigation are a bad idea
>and cause serious usability problems. There's little need to consider
>accessibility issues when we know that it's a wrong approach anyway.
>Besides, designers who use drop down navigation menus on their pages
>will hardly take the considerable extra work needed to remove some of
>their accessibility problems.
>
>For a detailed discussion of the drawbacks of navigational drop down
>menus, as well as an advice on fixing some of the worst problem if you
>have been forced to use them, please check
>http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/navmenu.html
>
>> For an example of what I'd like to do, see:
> > http://www.wcc.cc.il.us/
>
>Bad usability and lack of accessibility everywhere.
>
>> I know that they're not using ALT tags,
>
>Symptomatic, isn't it? But adding ALT attributes (sic) would be like
>painting a collapsed building.
>
>--
>Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>
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