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Re: Drop-down menus

for

From: Terence de Giere
Date: Aug 2, 2003 2:35PM

I'm going to side with Jukka on this one. While there certainly may be
applications where drop down menus might be an advantage, the number of
potential negative effects for drop-down lists and menus on usability
and accessibility cited in various posts to this forum (and others), is
very large.

We might as well ask 'how can I hit someone on the head really hard with
a very large rock and not have it hurt (or worse)?'. This question of
dynamic menus pops up again and again on accessibility forums. The
consensus is always that drop-down menus are not a good idea, even for
normal users, let alone those with various cognitive or motor disorders.

The primary reason for using a drop-down list in a graphical user
interface is to save space when space is at a premium. Normally a SELECT
list is used for this. This can be a minor inconvenience for a screen
reader user.

Assuming a drop-down mechanism is accessible, meaning all the content of
the menus can be read with the various kinds of assistive technology, we
need to consider the amount of information a user needs to process.
'Accessible' drop down menus basically present a user with special
technology with all the links in all the menus, which on some sites can
be huge.

The sighted, coordinated user may see a dozen links, unless they focus
on a particular link and then they see maybe a dozen more, or perhaps
two dozen more if the list has more than a single sub level. The
assistive technology user however might have to wade through a hundred
or more links, and while accessible, the usability suffers greatly. A
huge list of links for site navigation is what a site map is for. A site
map can be organized with headings, secondary headings, as well as with
ordered or unordered lists so a user can get a comprehensive view of a
site if the user so chooses - the idea here is choice.

A home page is a portal to the site, that in a glance gives the user
sufficient information to find out what the site is about, and what
basic options are available. Well designed, the user can then drill down
into the site and find what they want. It is not necessary to secretly
embed a site map, as a drop down menu system, on the home page or any
other page for the user to find what they need. It does require good
navigation structure design.

It is easier to choose from a sequence of a limited number of choices,
page to page, than choose from all items at once. The assistive
technology user typically does not have the choice to uncover the sub
links in just one menu item as does the coordinated, mouse-driven
sighted user. He or she either does not get the sub links, or gets them all.

Except for the occasional use of a single SELECT list, there does not
appear to be a good assistive technology equivalency for dynamic
drop-down menus as far as ease of use, information content, and
function. We might as well put all the content in the site on a single
page; then all the user has to do is read one page. This issue of
drop-down menus comes up so frequently, I think we need to draft a stock
reply with our names at the bottom. Maybe WebAim could program the list
so whenever the phase drop-down menus is detected in a new discussion
post to the forum, it will send the stock reply.

Terence de Giere
<EMAIL REMOVED>



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