Re: DHTML drop down menus ADA compliant

"Juan Ulloa" <julloa@bcc.ctc.edu>
> You can have a website with DHTML dropdown menus that is accessible.  Some
> things you need to keep in mind are.
> The menu's (not the dropdowns) themselves cannot be generated by
javascript.

The menus could be generated by javascript but it may well not be the most
efficient (they could rewrite links from another place on the page, perhaps
moving the dynamic menus to a different logical position, or just adding
extra navigation to the partial navigation in the document - for example
adding links to sub-topics instead of just topics.

> And if javascript is turned off, you should be able to click on the menu
> item and allow you to go to webpage that has the options listed on the
> dropdown.

I'm slightly concerned by your description here, it seems a rather narrow
restriction on alternative mechanisms for providing the same functionality
to the user.  My concern is generally more about keyboard and voice browser
access to the menus in an accessible manner (ie can you tab to each menu
item in a sensible order, and does the voice browser render the links
distinct enough and in a sensible order.)

> Two dropdown menu scripts that can be used in an accessible website are:
the
> one generated by Macromedia Fireworks and the one created by Opencube.com

I'd be interested in the definition of accessible in the cases of the above
2 menus, neither (unless they have been consideralby improved in recent
times) would be considered accessible by me.

Jim.

Received on Wednesday, 14 January 2004 16:13:04 UTC