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Menu and Menubar Pattern

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No ARIA is better than Bad ARIA. Before using any ARIA, read this to understand why.

Menu and Menubar Pattern

About This Pattern

A menu is a widget that offers a list of choices to the user, such as a set of actions or functions. Menu widgets behave like native operating system menus, such as the menus that pull down from the menubars commonly found at the top of many desktop application windows. A menu is usually opened, or made visible, by activating a menu button, choosing an item in a menu that opens a sub menu, or by invoking a command, such as Shift + F10 in Windows, that opens a context specific menu. When a user activates a choice in a menu, the menu usually closes unless the choice opened a submenu.

A menu that is visually persistent is a menubar. A menubar is typically horizontal and is often used to create a menu bar similar to those found near the top of the window in many desktop applications, offering the user quick access to a consistent set of commands.

A common convention for indicating that a menu item launches a dialog box is to append "…" (ellipsis) to the menu item label, e.g., "Save as …".

Examples

Keyboard Interaction

The following description of keyboard behaviors assumes:

  1. A horizontal menubar containing several menuitem, menuitemradio, or menuitemcheckbox elements.
  2. Some menuitem elements in the menubar have child submenus that contain vertically arranged items.
  3. Some of the menuitem elements in the submenus have child submenus with items that are also vertically arranged.

When reading the following descriptions, also keep in mind that:

  1. Focusable elements, which may have role menuitem, menuitemradio, or menuitemcheckbox, are referred to as items.
  2. If a behavior applies to only certain types of items, e.g., menuitem elements, the specific role name is used.
  3. Submenus, also known as popup menus, are elements with role menu.
  4. Except where noted, menus opened from a menubutton behave the same as menus opened from a menubar.

When a menu opens, or when a menubar receives focus, keyboard focus is placed on the first item. Because menubar and menu elements are composite widgets as described in the practice for Keyboard Navigation Inside Components, Tab and Shift + Tab do not move focus among the items in the menu. Instead, the keyboard commands described in this section enable users to move focus among the elements in a menubar or menu.

  • Tab and Shift + Tab:
    • Move focus into a menubar:
      • If focus is moving into the menubar for the first time, focus is set on the first menuitem.
      • If the menubar has previously contained focus, focus is optionally set on the menuitem that last had focus. Otherwise, it is set on the first menuitem that is not disabled.
    • When focus is on a menuitem in a menu or menubar, move focus out of the menu or menubar, and close all menus and submenus.
    • Note that Tab and Shift + Tab do not move focus into a menu. Unlike a menubar, a menu is not visually persistent, and authors are responsible for ensuring focus moves to an item inside of a menu when the menu opens.
  • Enter:
    • When focus is on a menuitem that has a submenu, opens the submenu and places focus on its first item.
    • Otherwise, activates the item and closes the menu.
  • Space:
    • (Optional): When focus is on a menuitemcheckbox, changes the state without closing the menu.
    • (Optional): When focus is on a menuitemradio that is not checked, without closing the menu, checks the focused menuitemradio and unchecks any other checked menuitemradio element in the same group.
    • (Optional): When focus is on a menuitem that has a submenu, opens the submenu and places focus on its first item.
    • (Optional): When focus is on a menuitem that does not have a submenu, activates the menuitem and closes the menu.
  • Down Arrow:
    • When focus is on a menuitem in a menubar, and that menuitem has a submenu, opens the submenu and places focus on the first item in the submenu.
    • When focus is in a menu, moves focus to the next item, optionally wrapping from the last to the first.
  • Up Arrow:
    • When focus is in a menu, moves focus to the previous item, optionally wrapping from the first to the last.
    • (Optional): When focus is on a menuitem in a menubar, and that menuitem has a submenu, opens the submenu and places focus on the last item in the submenu.
  • Right Arrow:
    • When focus is in a menubar, moves focus to the next item, optionally wrapping from the last to the first.
    • When focus is in a menu and on a menuitem that has a submenu, opens the submenu and places focus on its first item.
    • When focus is in a menu and on an item that does not have a submenu, performs the following 3 actions:
      1. Closes the submenu and any parent menus.
      2. Moves focus to the next item in the menubar.
      3. If focus is now on a menuitem with a submenu, either: (Recommended) opens the submenu of that menuitem without moving focus into the submenu, or opens the submenu of that menuitem and places focus on the first item in the submenu.
      Note that if the menubar were not present, e.g., the menus were opened from a menubutton, Right Arrow would not do anything when focus is on an item that does not have a submenu.
  • Left Arrow:
    • When focus is in a menubar, moves focus to the previous item, optionally wrapping from the first to the last.
    • When focus is in a submenu of an item in a menu, closes the submenu and returns focus to the parent menuitem.
    • When focus is in a submenu of an item in a menubar, performs the following 3 actions:
      1. Closes the submenu.
      2. Moves focus to the previous item in the menubar.
      3. If focus is now on a menuitem with a submenu, either: (Recommended) opens the submenu of that menuitem without moving focus into the submenu, or opens the submenu of that menuitem and places focus on the first item in the submenu.
  • Home: If arrow key wrapping is not supported, moves focus to the first item in the current menu or menubar.
  • End: If arrow key wrapping is not supported, moves focus to the last item in the current menu or menubar.
  • Any key that corresponds to a printable character (Optional): Move focus to the next item in the current menu whose label begins with that printable character.
  • Escape: Close the menu that contains focus and return focus to the element or context, e.g., menu button or parent menuitem, from which the menu was opened.

Note

  1. Disabled menu items are focusable but cannot be activated.
  2. A separator in a menu is not focusable or interactive.
  3. If a menu is opened or a menubar receives focus as a result of a context action, Escape or Enter may return focus to the invoking context. For example, a rich text editor may have a menubar that receives focus when a shortcut key, e.g., alt + F10, is pressed while editing. In this case, pressing Escape or activating a command from the menu may return focus to the editor.
  4. Although it is recommended that authors avoid doing so, some implementations of navigation menubars may have menuitem elements that both perform a function and open a submenu. In such implementations, Enter and Space perform a navigation function, e.g., load new content, while Down Arrow, in a horizontal menubar, opens the submenu associated with that same menuitem.
  5. When items in a menubar are arranged vertically and items in menu containers are arranged horizontally:
    1. Down Arrow performs as Right Arrow is described above, and vice versa.
    2. Up Arrow performs as Left Arrow is described above, and vice versa.

WAI-ARIA Roles, States, and Properties

  • A menu is a container of items that represent choices. The element serving as the menu has a role of either menu or menubar.
  • The items contained in a menu are child elements of the containing menu or menubar and have any of the following roles:
  • If activating a menuitem opens a submenu, the menuitem is known as a parent menuitem. A submenu's menu element is:
    • Contained inside the same menu element as its parent menuitem.
    • Is the sibling element immediately following its parent menuitem.
  • A parent menuitem has aria-haspopup set to either menu or true.
  • A parent menuitem has aria-expanded set to false when its child menu is not visible and set to true when the child menu is visible.
  • One of the following approaches is used to enable scripts to move focus among items in a menu as described in the practice for Keyboard Navigation Inside Components:
    • The menu container has tabindex set to -1 or 0 and aria-activedescendant set to the ID of the focused item.
    • Each item in the menu has tabindex set to -1, except in a menubar, where the first item has tabindex set to 0.
  • When a menuitemcheckbox or menuitemradio is checked, aria-checked is set to true.
  • When a menu item is disabled, aria-disabled is set to true.
  • Items in a menu may be divided into groups by placing an element with a role of separator between groups. For example, this technique should be used when a menu contains a set of menuitemradio items.
  • All separators should have aria-orientation consistent with the separator's orientation.
  • If a menubar has a visible label, the element with role menubar has aria-labelledby set to a value that refers to the labelling element. Otherwise, the menubar element has a label provided by aria-label.
  • If a menubar is vertically oriented, it has aria-orientation set to vertical. The default value of aria-orientation for a menubar is horizontal.
  • An element with role menu either has:
    • aria-labelledby set to a value that refers to the menuitem or button that controls its display.
    • A label provided by aria-label.
  • If a menu is horizontally oriented, it has aria-orientation set to horizontal. The default value of aria-orientation for a menu is vertical.

Note

If aria-owns is set on the menu container to include elements that are not DOM children of the container, those elements will appear in the reading order in the sequence they are referenced and after any items that are DOM children. Scripts that manage focus need to ensure the visual focus order matches this assistive technology reading order.

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This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.