Re: [orca-list] Is there anything which can be done with orca or is this website's navigation inaccessible?

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis googlemail com>]

Michael Whapples wrote:
> As a question regarding what to advise, I have found other sites
> where the menu systems seem "accessible" but behave differently with
> different screen readers, and so being difficult to use (or in some
> cases to appear inaccessible) with certain assistive technology, so
> might it be better to suggest a plain link navigation alternative as
> well (eg. should javascript be unavailable, or every page has a link to
> a site map)?

In my view, dropdown menus are good model for application-type menus or 
very regularly used navigation and a bad model for the main navigation 
of rarely visited content-driven websites. I think a better model is to 
have a list of links pointing to hubpages which have navigation for 
their subject areas. In addition, this is easy to implement.

However, it's entirely possible to take markup that creates list of 
hubpage links or even a sitemap tree when JavaScript is not available, 
and, when JavaScript is available in the browser, transform the 
generated list into a DHTML dropdown menu that can be navigated using a 
keyboard, a screen reader, a voice browser, a mouse, a touch screen, 
etc. It's just not terrifically easy; there are so many factors to take 
into account that most implementations get it wrong, as you've noticed.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis