Re: F10 and menubars

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Owen Taylor wrote:

> As far as highlighting menu items without selecting the submenu ...
> I don't think it's really worth the work that it would take
> to implement it ... it's not really a functionality thing, just
> a cosmetic detail.

There are, I believe, a couple of accessibility reasons for giving focus
to the menu title rather than straight to the first item on the menu. 
(And likewise for subsequently giving focus to neighbouring menu titles
as you navigate along the menu bar, until you explicitly navigate down
into a menu).  

One of these is that if the menu title is given focus, then a
screenreader will presumably just read out the menu title, whereas if an
item on that menu is given focus instead, there's no easy way for a
blind user to determine the name of the menu that has focus.  (This, I
assume, is why Windows and Java both give focus to menu titles rather
than menu items when you press F10.)  

A screenreader could admittedly include extra functionality to work
around this, but Bill did mention another situation where giving focus
to the menu title is preferable.  Which I've temporarily forgotten, but
you can read it in a recent post of his to the accessibility list :o)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems