Some of our JAWS users have become accustomed to using the Quick Links tool in JAWS to navigate quickly to items in larger menus. Up to this point in our Tridion 2013 implementation, we've taken every step known to ensure full keyboard and mouse navigability and full support for screen readers as well. This includes the use of a variety of ARIA attributes as well as the Role attribute.  

The Role attribute was used to identify the menubar, submenus, and menu items. For some reason, JAWS fails to add visible menu items to the list of Quick Links when using role="menu" or role="menuitem" in a menu item. While as developers we understand the philosophical difference between a menu item and a link, some of our users have the expectation that those menu items should be included in the list of Quick Links.

To meet that expectation, we've temporarily commented out the code that adds role="menu" and role="menuitem" until we can figure out another way to properly introduce menu items into the Quick Links functionality.  Additionally, we've added screen reader only text that reads "SUBMENU" to all parent menu items that have child navigation. We hope that this will further aid non-sighted users in navigating through complex menus.

No changes were necessary to our use of ARIA attributes in the menu items.