Opinions on accessible menu?

[Samuël van Laere]

What is your opinion on this menu:
http://www.accessibility.nl/amenu3/

Also read the original e-mail below.


Regards,
Samuël van Laere
the Netherlands


Hello,

Good news for accessibility. Accessibility organisations in the Netherlands
have just finished a document with a clarification of the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 priority 1. This document has been approved by
all relevant stakeholders (government, industry, disability orgs. etc.). The
document is based on study of the WCAG1.0 archives and the current WCAG2.0
draft. It provides a sound base for developers who want to produce an
accessible site. Also it can be used for harmonisation of evaluation.
Finally, the further work on the project offers an evaluation methodology
for enforcement of laws based on WCAG1.0 and a Quality Mark.

The project is supported and funded by five Dutch Ministries and all
relevant stakeholders and will produce the first Quality Marks in October.
Allready the Quality Mark project has produced the Design4all Evaluation
scheme (www.design4all.org). 14 sites have been declared accessible. Please
note that the project has not produced a new set of Guidelines but rather a
clarification that is fully compliant with the intentions of the existing
WCAG1.0 document. The document can be found at:

http://www.accessibility.nl/en/qualitymark/normdoc.php

Also we would like to draw your attention to a free javascript menu we are
working hard to make accessible. We think this version complies with WCAG1.0
priority 1 and is user friendly for people with disabilities. We tested it
in Jaws, Supernova, IBM HPR, WebFormator and Lynx. It also works without
JavaScript, without Stylesheets and it is scalable. If you can find some
time, we would very much like your opinion about this menu. If you can find
anything that is not accessible, please send your comments to
(e-mail address removed). Sorry about the menu being in Dutch, it can be found
at:

http://www.accessibility.nl/amenu3/

Kindest regards,
Eric Velleman

 

[Jim Royal]

What is your opinion on this menu:
http://www.accessibility.nl/amenu3/

I've never seen a pop-up menu that generates its own scroll bar before.

It appears to work only in Internet Explorer. In Safari, it does not
position the pop-up menu in the correct location, and creates a
vertical scroll bar. In Mozilla, the same thing happens, but it
generates both vertical and horizontal scroll bars -- inside the pop-up
menu.

Accessible? Not in the least.

 

[Spartanicus]

Accessible? Not in the least.

Why not?

 

[Leif K-Brooks]

Why not?

All of the reasons which you didn't quote, maybe?

 

[Toby A Inkster]

What is your opinion on this menu:
http://www.accessibility.nl/amenu3/

It's pretty good.

Keyboard navigation tested with Opera 7.23 doesn't quite work. I can jump
to the top level links and I can see the second level links but not reach
them.

It would be nice if you could get it working *without* Javascript in
Gecko and Opera. Take a look at:

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/menus/demo.html

 

[OllimaX]

Why not?

Great in Opera 7.11 and IE5.5
Just horrible in Firebird, second level items are badly dislocated.
NS 6.2 -surprise-is abit beter, but for some reason the orange colour stays
on buttons oddly.

Didn't have courage to check the old NS

If it was like in Opera in all browsers, it would be quite good. It works
there even without js, but takes a lot of space, althought you are using
pretty large buttons now.


Oll¡maX!

 

[Steve Pugh]

It's pretty good.

Keyboard navigation tested with Opera 7.23 doesn't quite work. I can jump
to the top level links and I can see the second level links but not reach
them.

The ordinary keyboard nav works for me in Opera 7.23. On pressing 'a'
it cycles through the primary and secondary levels in the correct
order. All links are reachable and activatable (is that a word?)

Ah, the spatial navigation (shift+arrow keys) is a problem, as you say
can't get at the secondary links. I guess this is what you were
talking about.

Steve

 

[rf]

Didn't have courage to check the old NS

Oddly it degrades quite nicely.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/rf/test/z.jpg

Suffers from the resize bug of course

Cheers
Richard.

 

[Spartanicus]

All of the reasons which you didn't quote, maybe?

1) For those of you who don't understand Dutch, the page states that it
is still being tweaked.
2) The fact that it currently exhibits a few cosmetic quirks in some
UA's has nothing to do with *accessibility*.

 

[Jim Royal]

2) The fact that it currently exhibits a few cosmetic quirks in some
UA's has nothing to do with *accessibility*.

If the menus cannot be accessed easily... It. Is. Not. Accessible.

 

[Spartanicus]

If the menus cannot be accessed easily... It. Is. Not. Accessible.

A moronic definition of accessibility.

 

[JustAnotherGuy]

A moronic definition of accessibility.

It's more of a definition of usability.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

The ordinary keyboard nav works for me in Opera 7.23. On pressing 'a'
it cycles through the primary and secondary levels in the correct
order. All links are reachable and activatable (is that a word?)

That's odd, because I do remember trying both keyboard navigation methods
and neither seemed to work well, although 'a' and 'q' was better than
spatial navigation.

It seems to work now though. Perhaps it has been tweaked since my post, or
else my browser was having a bad day.

 

[Jim Royal]

A moronic definition of accessibility.

Sticks and stones.

I'll let the editors of the OED know your opinion of them.

 

[Lauri Raittila]

It's pretty good.

Presuming he can fix problems other people pointed out.

Keyboard navigation tested with Opera 7.23 doesn't quite work. I can jump
to the top level links and I can see the second level links but not reach
them.

A and q work well Opera 7.5p1. Spatial navigation don't do well because
the sublinks are not exactly right to links so it. I can only use it for
last menu item. Anyway, first menu I have been able to use using just
keyboard.

It would be nice if you could get it working *without* Javascript in
Gecko and Opera. Take a look at:

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/menus/demo.html

Yes. That would make it even better.

 

[Spartanicus]

It's more of a definition of usability.

Not particularly imo.

The right questions to ask with regard to accessibility:

Does it rely on optional technologies (js, css, flash etc)?
Does it scale to the available screen space (for visual access)?
Can it be expected to work when accessed with less commonly used UA's
(screen readers, PDA's, cell phones, braille convertors etc.).
Is it correctly marked up?
Is the font resizable?

The menu passes all these test.

The menu works fully in all of the browsers I have tested it with (Opera
6/7, IE5.5, Mozilla 1.5, NS4).

On top of that the menu displayed fine in Opera 6/7, IE5.5 and NS4.

Jim Royal dismissed it with the remark "Accessible? Not in the least."
His reason: it currently exhibits cosmetic issues in Mozilla and Safari.
This is a clueless view of accessibility. Note that the menu is not
finished, it's a work in progress.

 

[Spartanicus]

Sticks and stones.

Apologies for the use of the m word, I overreacted.

I'll let the editors of the OED know your opinion of them.

I doubt that the editors of OED would thank you for attributing your
cluelessness about accessibility to them.