Why is aria-expanded not supported on role=menuitem plus aria-haspopup?

Hi,
I'm working on a project regarding menus, and this doesn't make any sense to me.

It should be possible to convey the expanded state of a menuitem that is a submenu that includes aria-haspopup="true" on it, like so:

<a href="#" role="menuitem" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false"

Or

<a href="#" role="menuitem" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="true"

However this is not in the ARIA 1.1 spec:
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#h-aria-expanded

This is very important for touch screen devices to determine which menuitem node is actually expanded versus others that are not when these open submenus.

In contrast, I see that aria-expanded shows that it inherits into role=menu and role=menubar, but if the menu container is already rendered and perceivable to ATs then the menu is implicitly expanded anyway, so it's useless to have aria-expanded on these roles.

Bryan Garaventa
Accessibility Fellow
SSB BART Group, Inc.
bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com
415.624.2709 (o)
www.SSBBartGroup.com

Received on Wednesday, 19 October 2016 19:05:54 UTC