- From: Garret Wilson <garret@globalmentor.com>
- Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 18:17:24 -0700
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I'm designing a web site that uses pulldown menus. The natural choice for the menu content is an XHTML ordered list. This allows accessibility software to present the information as a list of links to those with visual impairments. With CSS and JavaScript I can style the list to appear as a horizontal pulldown menu. The problem comes with internationalization. If someone views my site in a right-to-left language such as Arabic, everything should be right-aligned and flow from right to left---including the pulldown menu. I'm not aware of any CSS I can use to reorder the menu visually. One choice is to simply generate the ordered list in reverse order if being used in a right-to-left context, but this causes accessibility problems---the list will appear in the wrong order in the content. Another solution (the one I'm beginning to prefer) is to include the links as cells in a single-row table. This will allow the content to always provide the list in its correct logical order, but I can use the dir attribute to indicate that the items should be reversed if viewed in a right-to-left locale. I know---I have a tendency to shudder at table abuse for layout, but here it seems to provide better content/presentation separation than alternatives. Anybody have any better suggestions on how to encode a pulldown menu so that it will be accessible yet display it the way a right-to-left reader would expect it? Thanks, Garret
Received on Tuesday, 19 July 2005 01:17:31 UTC