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

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From: glen walker
Date: May 9, 2018 8:15AM

I don't know if there's a "war" going on between menus and navigation, but
I agree with your designers in this case. It's essentially a menu of
navigation elements. It's not a menu in the traditional sense like a
desktop app where menus perform some kind of action. In your case, the
menu is taking you to another page so it's performing a navigation instead
of an action on the page.

Tab and Shift+Tab are perfectly valid when I hear the screen reader tell me
I have a list of links.

One thing I would change is not mix links and buttons in the menu. Make
them all links. The items that have a dropdown correctly have
aria-expanded, you should keep that, but change it from a button to a link.

Also, when a link (formerly button) is expanded and shows the submenu, the
Escape key should close the submenu.

They also have a bug that if the submenu is displayed and I tab through the
entire submenu and focus moves back to the main menu, if the next main menu
item is an expandable item, then the submenu (correctly) dismisses. If the
next main menu is not an expandable item, the submenu does *not* dismiss -
that's a bug. For example, expand the "Transaction" menu, tab through the
submenu to "Culpa". The next tab moves to "Reports" and the submenu
disappears. That's correct. Now expand the "Admin" submenu and tab
through "Unilateral". The next tab moves to "Customer" on the main menu
but the submenu does not dismiss.

Glen


On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 7:59 AM, Meacham, Steve - FSA, Kansas City, MO <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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> >
>
> Success should not be defined in terms of money, but by helping people to
> be independent individuals through inclusion.
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