Re: Accessible Dynamic Menus

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 04:10:48 -0700, Hoffman, Geoffrey wrote:
> Julian Voelcker wrote:

> > I know that you can do some fun things now with lists and CSS, but can
> > they constitute being accessible.
> 
> Maybe I am missing something, list please correct me if I am wrong here...
> the answer is technically "no".
> 
> 'Dynamic menus' that pop-up on rollover
> - require a mouse to roll over them 
>   (there are a few exceptions that can be triggered using a key only in
> certain browsers)

Some do, some don't. Typically those that require a mouse to rollover
them for the trigger are not entirely accessible (as they depend on
the user having good motor skills).

Some activation on click and persist until the user clicks again,
while also triggering in the usual tab through links method.

These could possible be considered accessible.

> - require javascript to make a layer appear or hide
> 
> Thus any attempt at making a dynamic DHTML menu is going to require
> JavaScript (which is ignored by browsers such as Lynx).

So you have to make sure it degrades cleanly.

> There's a section of the 508 standard that says that if you are
> presenting content using a script (e.g. your entire navigation menu
> via a javascript file) you must also have the same content provided
> without the scripting (e.g. inside a noscript element, or in plain
> text) thus you have to create two separate versions of the menu.

Not so. As with all well written JavaScript, you start with HTML that
works on its own merits, then you add CSS and JavaScript on top of
it. The links should be created in HTML, not written out by the script
(unfortunately a lot of scripts do write out the links, which some
authors love because they don't know about SSI or preprocessing).

-- 
David Dorward                                     http://david.us-lot.org/
         Redesign in progress: http://stone.thecoreworlds.net/
2 and 5 are objects, as opposed to Java, where they are primitive thingies.

Received on Wednesday, 28 May 2003 03:19:12 UTC