Keyboard Accessibility of Drop Down Menus

Hi all

I've been looking through the IG archives and haven't seen an answer to this question, however if I've missed it please excuse my ignorance.

The question arose recently about whether a drop down menu that activates upon mouseover is accessible and should fail 2.1.1 Keyboard Accessibility.  In practicality, the use can navigate to the tab and press 'enter' and go to that page and read what is available and usually see the same information they could get from the drop down menu.  However it could be argued that as they have to perform this extra step and then backtrack if the required information was not in that tag - that it is not providing the same functionality and therefore fail G202.  If you consider that this is a fail, would it then pass if an 'onkeypress' or similar were added as a redundant control.

Your comments would be appreciated.


Regards

Vivienne L. Conway, B.IT(Hons), MACS CT, AALIA(cs)
PhD Candidate & Sessional Lecturer, Edith Cowan University, Perth, W.A.
Director, Web Key IT Pty Ltd.
v.conway@ecu.edu.au<mailto:v.conway@ecu.edu.au>
v.conway@webkeyit.com<mailto:v.conway@webkeyit.com>
Mob: 0415 383 673

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