Wātea theme's navigation menus (MainNav.ss) are not accessible

[cal-mcm]

The navigation needs to be properly audited for accessibility against WCAG 2.1, and tested using multiple assistive technologies, across multiple platforms. You'll discover a range of severe accessibility issues with the navigation implementation. The code needs to be reviewed and remediated by somebody with a high level of accessibility knowledge (testing, semantic HTML, correct ARIA usage, etc).

I'd suggest, at a minimum, the navigation should be tested with:

1. VoiceOver on iOS
2. VoiceOver on macOS
3. NVDA on Windows
4. JAWS on Windows
5. TalkBack on Android
6. Keyboard-only
7. axe DevTools

Some current issues I've picked up are:

• Navigation menus cannot be announced by VoiceOver on iOS, with each menu item simply announced as "menu item" - therefore making it impossible for VoiceOver users to know what the menu item actually is
• Keyboard-only users on desktop cannot access expanded dropdown menus in the navigation - the keyboard focus just skips over the expanded content
• Improper use of role=menubar, role=menuitem, role=menu - this results in a huge amount of audio clutter for screen reader users e.g. the "expand" buttons are announced by NVDA on Windows as "menu item menu button collapsed subMenu Display Features submenu pages" - this has a huge amount of clutter and makes the interface hard to understand for screen reader users

Recommendations:
Look at the navigation implementation on digital.govt.nz, how it does not use the menubar/menu/menuitem roles, and provides a screen-reader and keyboard-accessible experience

[jo9ty60]

Any eta on when someone will look into these accessibility issues which is a government requirement to meet WCAG 2.1 to level AA?

[dhensby]

Given that CWP has been discontinued I doubt there will be much incentive to make these changes unless they are community lead.

[jo9ty60]

Thank you for your response @dhensby. I will pass this information on to our Accessibility Management Team.