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Is this Navigation or a Menu? How should it work?

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From: Meacham, Steve - FSA, Kansas City, MO
Date: May 9, 2018 7:59AM

Live example of a top-navigation menu: http://usda-fsa.github.io/fsa-style/boilerplate.

The designers of this user interface rely upon default browser keyboard support only, which is TAB, SHIFT-TAB, SPACE, and ENTER. They do not support arrow keys or the escape key, as I would have expected as a keyboard-only user. I recommended following WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1 for Menus and Menu buttons, but the authors insist that those do not apply, because it is not a menu, but rather that it is "navigation." I don't get it.

First, I was unaware of what they described as an almost religious war about calling this a menu vs calling it navigation. Their claim is that the "navigation" side of this debate is winning or has essentially won.

Second, regardless of what we call it, it utilizes a hierarchy of unordered lists containing links, buttons, and headings. I find it tedious, at best, to use with only a keyboard, and impossible to understand and perceive non-visually using a screen reader. I cannot use JAWS to look at the headings on the page, links on the page, the buttons on the page, the lists on the page, or even the regions on the page, to find the choices available to me. The best I can do is realize that there is a Navigation region, use JAWS to jump to it, then navigate sequentially, item by item, pressing buttons when I find them, which unhide nested lists of more of the same.

Perhaps the worst thing is I have to remember all the steps I took to drill down to a given choice in order to understand it's context, such as what each "Overview" link is for.

But maybe I just have a bad attitude, or my cognitive deficit is due to Multiple Sclerosis, which isn't well-addressed by WCAG, and is just my problem and not a conformance problem. If you're willing and able, please take a look provide me with critical feedback (positive or negative) that I can use with the designers.

Steve Meacham, Digital Accessibility Program Manager
USDA FSA and FPAC +1 (816) 926-1942<tel:+1-816-926-1942>
For program support email <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >

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