ARIA and DUAL purpose elements

Greetings

 

I often come across tabs or menus where if you activate an item it directs
you to a different webpage, but if you mouse over it, it pops open a
submenu.

<a onmouseover="popoutSubMenu();"" href=http://www.something.com>Insurance
options</a>

 

Technically, when you map such an element to a menuitem or treeitem, the
user should be able to activate it with an enter key but open the submenu
using the arrow keys.

But the user would not know the difference between a typical menuitem that,
if you press enter, opens a submenu, and a menuitem that, when activated
with enter, navigates user to a different page.

 

Currently I have insisted that the landing page link be moved into the
submenu, so that when user activates these elements with arrow keys, space
bar or enter, the submenu opens.

Designers are not in love with that idea, and personally I'd rather be able
to either navigate to a page or open a submenu depending on which key I
press.

 

Since we have looked at introducing new ARIA attributes, I have been
contemplating one called "aria-actionable".

It would be valid on menuitems and treeitems and indicates that when enter
key is pressed it navigates to a different page, but when arrow down is
pressed, a submenu opens.

 

I'd rather find a way to accommodate a pattern that is widely used on the
web than telling people not to do it.

I know there are problems with this approach on touch-screen devices (where
user does not have access to a keyboard) but:

a.       There are touch-screen device issues with other ARIA elements and
patterns (we'll get there in ARIA 2.0) and

b.      This pattern is rarely seen on responsive modes of webpages where
the navigation menu is simplified.

 

I realize this would be an ARIA 2.0 item, it does not fit into our current
release schedule of ARIA 1.0, but I wanted to throw my thought out there
before creating an issue.

Thanks

-Birkir