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

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From: Jeremy Echols
Date: May 9, 2018 10:51AM

Why would you push for links over buttons? It seems like buttons are about changing state while links are about changing what you're looking at: http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#button and http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#link. Maybe I'm misreading this, but that's been my approach generally.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2018 7:15 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Is this Navigation or a Menu? How should it work?

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> >
>
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