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Re: Accessible Tree Navigation?

for

From: Henry, Michael (IntelliDyne)
Date: Oct 26, 2018 11:50AM

Thanks, Birkir.

Unfortunately, our markup is not going to change, but I will try again to digest the spec. It's pretty far outside my wheel house.

What I did gather, though, is that the "aria-expanded" attribute ought to be on the <span.icon>, which serves as the trigger to expand/collapse the sub menu?


- mh

---
Mike S. Henry
Creative Services Lead
IntelliDyne Contract Employee
Supporting Enterprise Infrastructure (formerly Military Health System Cyberinfrastructure Services - MCiS)
Desk: (703) 882-3962

From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2018 11:53:47 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible Tree Navigation?

Mike

First of, my general experience is that using trees and menus is a lot
of coding for developers and confusing for users.
If you canfit your paradigm into a simple disclosure/accordion pattern
you often save yourself a lot of head aches and your users too.

<button id="x" aria-expanded="false">Menu x</button>
<<div role="group" aria-labelledby="x" class="hidden"> <!-- this is
the group of elements displayed user clicks the button>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Link 1</a></li>
...
</ul>
</div>
(the list construct is optional).

When user clicks the button its aria-expanded attribute is set to
"true" and the group is displayed.

You can have the menu close when user moves focus out of it, as long
as you set the trigger button's aria-expanded back to false.
I the menu has a submenu you can use the same approach.

This approach doesn't require juggling multiple ARIA attributes and
writing JavaScript to manage keyboard focus.

If you still need to do that consult the ARIA Authoring Practices spec
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/
it is the ultimate/best guide for designing these widgets.
In section 3 explore either the menu button or the tree widget.
HTH
-B


On 10/26/18, Henry, Michael (IntelliDyne) < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hello, all.
>
> I hope this isn't too rudimentary of a question, but I've been trying to
> unravel how to properly use ARIA to make a left navigation (structured like
> tree navigation) accessible via keyboard.
>
> The more I read, though, the more turned around I get. Seems like every
> article I read uses a slightly different approach or different ARIA
> attributes, and none of them describe the exactly situation (markup
> structure) that we have. Hopefully you guys can help?
>
>
> Here's the basic structure of our navigation tree with my best current guess
> at appropriate use of ARIA:
>
> <h2 ID="tree_label" class="visiblyHidden">Submenu for current section</h2>
> <ul class="LV1" role="tree" aria-labelledby="tree_label">
> <li class="hasChildren">
> <div role="treeitem" aria-selected="true | false"
> aria-expanded="true | false" tabindex="0 | -1" >
> <span class="icon" role="button"
> onclick=""></span> [clicking here toggles the submenu open/closed]
> <a href="/Plans/Eligibility">Eligibility</a>
> </div>
> <ul role="group" class="LV2" >…</ul>
> </li>
> </ul>
>
> I'm afraid I'm so confused on this that I don't know exactly what to ask.
> But I think what I need to know is:
> 1) should the <li> or the <div> have the role of "treeitem"?
> 2) should the <li> or the <div> have the ARIA attributes?
> 3) should all elements that we intend to make focusable (including the
> <span.icon>, which expands/collapses the child <ul>) receive tabindex=-1
> (making them part of the Roving Tabindex)?
> 4) should it be the first Root Node ("Eligibility" in this example) that
> should have tabindex=0 on page load?
> 5) where is the appropriate place for the "aria-selected" attribute?
> 6) where is the appropriate place for the "aria-expanded" attribute?
>
> Thank you so much for any help.
> Mike
>
>
> ---
> Mike S. Henry
> Creative Services Lead
> IntelliDyne Contract Employee
> Supporting Enterprise Infrastructure (formerly Military Health System
> Cyberinfrastructure Services - MCiS)
> Desk: (703) 882-3962
>
> > > > >


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