Hi Teddy:
I just set up my site with a choice to use a TreeView and a Menu Control.
In the TreeView's SiteMap file I added the Outline numbering system so it
reads like:
1.1 Home
2.0 Investing
2.1 Research Stocks
2.2 Research Trusts
3.0 Site Administration
3.1Db Administration
3.2 View Log
It reads just like that with the down arrow keys.
Also, I can do a find on "Research Stocks" or Site Administration to jump
to the appropriate link.
I'm not sure about using a Access, hot, key with my Master Page setup and
am looking into setting focus and using hot keys with Master Pages next.
Anyway, it's working and is pretty clean with WE.
I used 2 sitemaps, one for the Menu Control without the outlining numbers
for the dynamic pulldowns for sighted folks and one for the TreeView to
use with WE, or Jaws I guess.
On the Default.aspx page I have the 2 buttons to set the desired
Navigation Mode, TreeView or Menu and just store the selected value in a
SessionVariable and test for it in the Load Event for the Master Page.
Only kicker is the client has to refresh the page to reset the mode unless
she uses the default menu control to jump to another page in which case it
works as expected.
I haven't been able to get around this and the blasted thing wants to
Resend the page for some reason but that happens with my e-trade account
so I guess it's normal.
Give it a try and tell me if it reads as it does for me:
URL:
www.RicksRacPlace.net
Rick Farmington Mich. USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 2:30 AM
Subject: Re: making asp.net menu control accessible
Ok Rick. Thank you.
I said that I prefer the menus which display all their elements in a list
of lists, because when I move the focus at the start of the list, I hear
the number of top-level elements and how many of them have lists of other
elements, and I use to press control+F then type a few letters from the
word I am searching for, then I press F3 to move to the next found item,
until I reach the wanted menu and I can access it.
If I use a tree view I can't do this, because I need to go to the menu
label, click on it, and start arrowing until I found the wanted menu item
and this takes much time.
Octavian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ricks Place" <OFBGMail@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: making asp.net menu control accessible
Hi:
The two main asp.net controls used are the Menu and TreeView controls.
This is because the Site Manager can just change one line of code in a
xml file called the SiteMap and have the Menu or TreeView change
reflected on all pages in the Site. So, Using these Standard controls
and making them work well would seem to be the best overall method.
Teddy, when you build your TreeView, add the appropriate level numbering
as a prefix or suffex to the node text and you have a nice, accessible
control.
I like the Dynamic DropDown nature of the Menu Control but it's messy at
best so far with a Screen Reader. If I arrow to a top-level tab, route
themouse there it expands, looks great, and on an otherwise blank page I
can amouse up and down the list. If, however, there is other text or
controls on the same line as the DropDown items WE will change focus to
the first readable item and the Menu's Dropdown List is collapsed. I
could extend the time before it collapses giving time for screen reader
users to get to the list to click but have not tried that yet since I'm
considering using a TreeView as I mentioned in place of the Menu
control, or offer it as an option to WE and JAWS etc... users.
I looked at the Menu using the Unordered List but reading 4 lines of
numbers to determine position for every single link was a pain so I
decided not to use that.
There are many, many ways to style the Menu and TreeView controls to
make them work well with a Screen Reader, just will take some
experimentation to find the fastest WE friendly method.
I'm guessing the TreeView with standard outlining level numbers or other
level indication would be the easiest control to set up but I like the
dynamic nature of the hover dropdown of the Menu Control so will keep
using that until I either give up and offer a selection for WE users or
just a TreeView with Auto features like auto-collapse and, perhaps,
expand when hovered over or on the Page Load event for collapsing it.
I just got my initial site up and running on the net and will be having
some folks take a peek and make suggestions. I'm too busy to spend much
time on this end of things but will try and make a couple accessibility
changes on the weekends.
Teddy and other programmers, I'll send you the code and SiteMap for the
controls if you want it so you can work on building a good WE friendly
control as well.
Rick Farmington Mich. USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jennifer Sutton" <jsuttondc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2008 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: making asp.net menu control accessible
Octavian and others who may be interested:
I've seen this menu-system discussed many times, elsewhere, and the one
caution, among others I've read, is that the way that all the lists of
links (with their nesting) is shown can really overload readers who are
not blind.
I know this is the blind programming list, but personally, I like to
keep in mind that it's important to balance what might work great for
us, against what might actually pose accessibility challenges to folks
with disabilities other than blindness.
Jennifer
At 06:43 AM 5/3/2008, you wrote:
I was also searching these days for a javascript accessible menu, and
I've tried the widgets offered by DOJO, extJS, YUI and a few others,
and some of them provide a pretty accessible menu, but finally I found
that the best one is provided by:
http://www.udm4.com/
The menus are created very easy, with a list of bulleted lists, which
could have other sub-lists and the elements of those list become menu
elements. The menus can be configured to be horizontal, vertical,
pop-up, and there may be changed many other options. For example, I
have chosen to put an image after the menu elements that have submenus
with an alt attribute of "SubMenu", so when I tab to the element that
has submenus, Jaws speaks the name of the menu element than "SubMenu",
and it also looks nice for the sighted.
I think what I like more is the fact that for the screen readers, all
the menus are shown like a common list of sub-lists, and I don't need
to click on the menu name, then on the sub-menu, then on the
sub-sub-menu in order to access the page I want, because I can see all
the links directly. The main list elements can also be defined as
headings, so they can be reached more easy and another advantage is
that it works even without Javascript, and all the links from the menus
are indexable by search engines.
It works much better than other menus created by the Javascript
libraries like DOJO, YUI, etc, because it doesn't use a table, but a
bulleted list, so the screen reader can announce us the level of the
list so we can understand better the structure of the menu.
It even has an option for using SAPI for speaking the menus, but I
don't think it is very utile, and it could also be configured to be
used with the keyboard by the sighted, but I couldn't try this either
(and it doesn't affect us anyway).
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