Re: making asp.net menu control accessible
- From: "Ricks Place" <OFBGMail@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 06:42:23 -0400
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).
<snip>
__________
View the list's information and change your settings at
//www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
__________
View the list's information and change your settings at
//www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
Other related posts:
