tab accessible

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 7:10 pm

I'm in a bit of a quadry on tabbing, I can option tab through menu items on the main menu provided they have a url, but if they have showmenu then the tabbing stops.

I know one way would be to have every main menu item also a link but for some reason I find that a bit confusing and the way my menu is set up all main menu items have to have a submenu to look right.

Could there be a way to extend the tab to showmenu items? or is that impossible?

Another idea, so what if I did have to make all main menu items also a main url for each submenu listing to make them tab-able, how about I add (a) (b) (c) to each main menu item, if there was a property called accesskey=a; This would help those who use speach instead of a keyboard?

Maybe a feature for accessibility could come out of this?

Thanks,
maz

kevin3442 · Post by **kevin3442** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 2:08 am

Hi Maz,

I seem to recall that keyboard accessibility is on the "to do"list, but I have no idea if that's really the case or what the target completion date might be. In the meantime, here's a kludge of a potential workaround. You say that you can tab to a main menu item if that item has a url defined. So, in menu items that currently have no url, how about defining a url that wouldn't actually do anything? You could do that by setting the url to a javascript comment. So, a menu item that opens a submenu but has no url, like this:

Code: Select all

aI("text=Item Text;showmenu=subMenuName;");

would become this:

Code: Select all

aI("text=Item Text;showmenu=subMenuName;url=javascript://;");

Since the url is basically bogus, clicking on the item should have no effect. Tried it in IE6 and NS7.1; it worked. One drawback.. when tabbing into the main menu, the fake url would show up in the browser's status bar as "javascript://".

Hope that helps,

Kevin

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:43 am

Hi Kevin,

Good to see you back, wasn't sure what to say to the javascript questions.

Well, we're moving in the right direction but I don't know if we'll ever be able to tab to the submenus. It will take some crafty planning to get the tabs lined up to link the site from the main menu.

In some cases it would work, like on the main menu a list of printers and submenu printers by manufacturer. So if you only tabbed through you would get all printers.

I think tabbing is good for people who can't use the mouse, but I don't know if screen readers can see javascript. If it could then the javascript could give a message, if submenus could use accesskeys or tabbing rows and columns that I think is done using the th headers? Then the javascript could identify how to access the row or column. Just a thought, I don't know much about accessible tables.

No, it can't be a message it has to be a url, so it needs to be a url that takes the tab into the first tab within the submenu, that makes much more sense, maybe even possible? To have a javascript url to jump to its submenu item.

I'm not feeling so good, catch you later,
maz

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sat Mar 20, 2004 4:41 pm

Kevin,

I just noticed, where I have the javascript on 'community', the onsubimage is absent in Mac Opera beta, is it a bug in Opera?

maz

kevin3442 · Post by **kevin3442** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 1:40 am

Hi Maz,

Sorry for the delayed reply. Been sick through the weekend & Monday.

I'm confused. I don't see any javascript from the 'Community' main menu item. Did you remove it since posting this, or am I looking in the wrong spot?

Kevin

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 4:12 am

I forgot about that, I removed he javascript.

maz

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:10 pm

I added a link to each main menu item for tabbing but they can't get to the submenu.

Does this help?
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/xulref/menuel.html#access

maz

Post by **John** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:17 pm

FWIW, same here - I can tab to the main menu but am unable to open the sub menus from the keyboard. I think the correct move would be right-arrow, but how would you let the system know that a sub-menu exists at a given location? Not everybody uses subimages (not sure why), so that's out. Key off of showmenu?

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:29 pm

I'm thinking that link might help, but it would probably have to be built into the menu, so that when accesskey is specified it pops up the first menu item and from there you could tab through the links.

When I saw that html attribute I tested it out, but didn't get anywhere because it didn't popup the submenu. Looking for ways for that to occur this might be close, but not a simple as I'd hoped.

maz

stephen702 · Post by **stephen702** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 4:04 am

While I use the Milonic menu for a national association's site, there's no point in my buying a license for my much larger college website, because our navigation choices must be accessible to those who can't use a mouse. Some ability to tab through the menus is essential if I am ever to use the Milonic menu there.

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 5:25 am

Right now, its possible to option-tab(mac) the main menu provided with url links. What can be done, is to make the main menu links to another set of links for those submenu items. Like where I have a separate list on submenus, the main link is list-all. Or a link to html form instead of a form in the submenu. Or mainmenu links to a page of links normally listed in the submenu.

Its getting to the submenu links that still needs a solution. I thinks its obvious now that it needs to activate a pop-up.

maz