Re: Thoughts on posinset and setsize with respect to menus with separators?

On 04/17/2015 04:59 PM, Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
> Hi Joanie,
> 
> I'm leaning towards your intuition, with one possible exception. The
> groups created separators are likely not useful from a setsize/posinset
> point of view.
> 
> The exception involves menu items that are radio buttons, i.e have
> role=" menuitemradio" [1].  Here the grouping is more important since
> selecting one of the menu items causes that one to be checked, while the
> other radio buttons in the group are all unchecked.
> 
> http://w3c.github.io/aria/aria/aria.html#menuitemradio

True. And I'm happy to compromise. :)

But if we do as you suggest, would it be confusing for users? If we had
something like:

* Portrait (radio menu item)
* Landscape (radio menu item)
* (non-navigable separator)
* Print (menu item)
* Print preview (menu item)

I would say that there are four menu items for the reasons I gave in the
previous mail's example, namely: I see four items as a sighted user, and
non-visually there are four items I can Down Arrow to before it's time
to give up. That is lost if we go with:

Portrait (1 of 2)
Landscape (2 of 2)
Print (1 of 2)
Print preview (2 of 2)

And what if the radio menu items were in the middle of the menu?

Open (1 of 2)
Close (2 of 2)
(non-navigable separator here)
Portrait (1 of 2)
Landscape (2 of 2)
(non-navigable separator here)
Print (1 of 2)
Print preview (2 of 2)

How do we explain that to the user? Normally you will be told the total
of items in the menu -- unless there's a radio menu in there somewhere
-- and then everything becomes sub-grouped? That would actually be worse
than the current situation, now that I think about it.

I also don't think that saying "1 of 2" instead of "1 of 4" would help
the user's understanding of the menu contents or the nature of the items
therein. The role is what conveys to the user that the options are
mutually exclusive.

The one reason I can think of for wanting to know just how many radio
menu items there are is because the group is seeming potentially large,
and the items themselves don't hint at how many there may be. For
instance, a list of locales or colors. But in my experience, if there
are a significant number of radio menu items, they are grouped together
as the sole contents of a submenu. Having been so grouped, my proposed
setsize would work.

--joanie

Received on Friday, 17 April 2015 22:12:17 UTC