Re: CSS nested list menus, how much is too much?

It was recently reported that some screen readers have trouble with 
nested lists where they do not report the end of a list. Unfortunately, 
I don't have the source of that information, but I think you may find 
it by searching the WSG archives (http://www.webstandardsgroup.org).

Drop downs were also discussed on WSG recently. It was said dropdowns 
implemented in HTML don't follow the OS's UI implementation of dropdown 
menus (i.e they are broken in terms of how users expect them to behave) 
and they require a high degree of motor skill to operate.

Additionally, there is the IA question: is it neccessary to link to 
every other page in the site from your main navigation device, or would 
some clearly defined top level menu items and a link to a site map 
suffice?

If your feeling is that there are too many links, then that is probably 
right. I personally think dropdowns are unneccessary and should be 
avoided in a web ui.

Look again at your IA.

kind regards
Terrence Wood.



On 12 Aug 2005, at 9:57 AM, Rebecca Cox wrote:

> Hi peops
>
> With the new method that a lot of people are using to create 
> "accessible,
> semantic" dropdown menus I am wondering if its all good in 
> accessibility
> terms or not.
>
> Say you have your site navigation marked up as nested unordered lists, 
> and
> this is on every page of your site. A lot of people are applying CSS 
> and a
> touch of javascript to this to create dropdown menus (ie with the 
> nested
> list content hidden until the user interacts with the top level of the
> menu.)
>
> Just ignoring the dropdowns aspect of this, is there any problem where 
> for
> example you might have every page in your site linked in a big nested 
> list
> of for example 100 or more items ?
>
> I am thinking it might be better to cut down the number of links in 
> the HTML
> as it's a lot to tab through for example. And possibly not the best 
> with
> some screen readers?
>
> An example (just the HTML, no dropdowns effect applied) is at
> http://www.reb.net.nz/navigation/ - most sites would have more 
> navigation
> items so it would be worse than here.
>
> I'm interested in whether others see this as a problem, and if so what
> solutions people are using.
>
> Cheers,
> Rebecca

Received on Thursday, 11 August 2005 23:18:43 UTC