I'd like to hear from folks who've used screen-readers:
What are the best ways to drill down into a nested list?
Consider a nested menu that's marked up as an unordered list
(UL). Select an item in the top-level menu and the page reloads with
a second-level menu of items opened up within the selected top-level
item. Select a second-level item and the page reloads with a menu of
third-level items opened up within the selected second-level item.
In a visual menu it's usually sufficient simply to open up these
sub-menus. Because the parent menu remains the same, our gaze
immediately jumps to a new sub-menu that's appeared the screen. We
don't have to re-read menu items we've already read, because we can
tell at a glance what parts of the menu we've already seen and what
parts are new.
However, it must be a very different experience using a
screen-reader. When the page reloads, I assume the screen-reader
begins reading the menu from the beginning again. The user would
have to listen for a new sub-menu, but without really knowing for
sure whether a new sub-menu had appeared. If this is the scenario,
then browsing with a screen-reader must require a great deal of
patience as you wait through the repetition of the menu each time in
order to discover the new list of sub-options.
Tell me if this would be a better scenario: When you select a menu
item, the page reloads with a set of breadcrumbs that spells out the
history of selected menu items, such as:
portfolio : music : compositions
After the breadcrumb list comes the current sub-menu, in this example
a list of compositions.
Somewhere else on the page, perhaps last in the markup, would be the
full menu including all menu items at each selected level. A "jump
to navigation" link early on the page could get you there quickly.
Please let me know if this scenario would work for you, and if not
what other menu functionality would best suit the screen-reader
environment. If this description isn't clear, let me know and I'll
prepare a live demo.
Thanks,
Paul
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