We were using Foundation's accordion menu to open/close nested lists of
links. Unfortunately, Foundation's accordion makes it impossible to
access links in nested links using the keyboard [1] (note the issue is
closed, but in the latest version of Foundation, 6.8.1, it's still
present, and Foundation's development is mostly discontinued).
Furtheremore, it adds the `menuitem` role to links, but ARIA menus are
not ment for navigation but for application behavior and, since it
doesn't add the `menubar` or `menu` roles to the parent elements, it
results in accessibility issues for people using screen readers (also
reported by the Axe accessibility testing engine).
So we need to implement our own solution. We're using the most commonly
used pattern: a buttton with the `aria-expanded` attribute. And, for
people using browsers where JavaScript hasn't loaded, we're keeping the
submenus open at all times (just like we were doing until now), and
we're disabling the buttons (since they do nothing without JavaScript).
This might not be an ideal solution, but it's probably good enough, and
way better than what we had until now.
We've also considered using the <details> and <summary> elements instead
of using buttons to open/close items on the list. However, these
elements still present some accessibility issues [2], and the transition
between open and closed can't be animated unless we overwrite the
`click` event with JavaScript. The pattern of using these elements to
open/close a nested list of links isn't common either, and some people
using screen readers might get confused when entering/leaving the nested
list.
We tried other approaches to get the animation effect, all of them based
on adding `[aria-expanded="false"]:not([disabled]) + * { display: none;
}` to the CSS file.
Unfortunately, animation using CSS isn't feasible right now because
browsers can't animate a change form `height: 0` to `height: auto`.
There are some hacks like animating the `max-height` or the `flex-grow`
property, but the resulting animation is inconsistent. A perfect
animation can be done using the `grid-template-rows` property [3], but
it requires adding a grid container and only works in Firefox and recent
versions of Chrome and similar browsers.
Getting to a solution with JavaScript was also tricky. With the
following approach, `slideToggle()` opened the menu the first time, even
if it was already open (not sure why):
```
toggle_buttons.on("click", function() {
$(this).attr("aria-expanded", !JSON.parse($(this).attr("aria-expanded")));
$(this).next().slideToggle();
});
```
This made the arrow turn after the menu had slided instead of doing it
at the same time:
```
toggle_buttons.on("click", function() {
var button = $(this);
button.next().slideToggle(function() {
button.attr("aria-expanded",
!JSON.parse(button.attr("aria-expanded")));
});
}
```
With this, everything disappeared quickly:
```
toggle_buttons.on("click", function() {
var expanded = JSON.parse($(this).attr("aria-expanded"));
if (expanded) {
$(this).next().slideUp();
} else {
$(this).next().slideDown();
}
$(this).attr("aria-expanded", !expanded);
}
```
So, in the end, we're hiding the nested link lists with JavaScript
instead of CSS.
[1] Issue 12046 in https://github.com/foundation/foundation-sites
[2] https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2022/09/12/details-summary.html
[3] https://css-tricks.com/css-grid-can-do-auto-height-transitions
The division operator `/` from Sass is deprecated because `/` is used in
CSS for uses other than dividing numbers. That's why we were getting
many warnings like:
```
Deprecation Warning: Using / for division outside of calc() is
deprecated and will be removed in Dart Sass 2.0.0.
Recommendation: math.div($line-height, 2) or calc($line-height / 2)
More info and automated migrator: https://sass-lang.com/d/slash-div
margin-top: $line-height / 2;
```
Since using math.div makes the code harder to read and `calc` is
universally supported by all browsers (although the implementation in
Internet Explorer doesn't work in certain cases), we're using `calc`
when assigning the value to a CSS property.
However, we're also using divisions when assigning Sass variables, and
in those cases using `calc` is trickier because sometimes these
variables are used in other operations. We'll handle these cases in the
next commit.
This way we simplify the code a bit.
Note we're only using this function when variables for background colors
are already defined, since that means customizing the variable using the
background color will automatically change the color of the text.
Customization isn't easier when using raw colors.
We were defining (for instance) white text against the `$brand`
background. That meant that, if somebody customized the `$brand` color
so it used a light color, they had to customize the text color as well
in order to guarantee proper contrast between text and background
colors.
So we're using `color-pick-contrast` instead, which means we don't have
to manually calculate whether white or black will be the color which
makes the text more readable.
On very large screens, the admin menu had a lot of blank space for
languages where all sections had short names (like English). This was
inconvenient because the icon to open a submenu was far from its
associated menu item.
Using the `max-content` value for the `max-width` property, we reduce
the amount of blank space in these cases.
Since the icon was absolutely positioned, in some languages it
overlapped with the text.
Using a flex layout solves this issue. It also improves the appearance
of elements whose text spans over multiple lines; previously the second
line would go under their section icon.
We're also using the `$global-left` variable so the icon is properly
displayed in languages written from right to left. We could use the
`margin-inline-start` property instead, but it isn't universally
supported in every browser yet.
Since the layout is now incompatible with the old (and obsolete) way to
add icons to the menu (using classes which would use the
`[class^="icon-"]` selector), we're removing this code.
When items went over multiple lines, the distance between their lines
was the same as the distance between one element and another one. This
made it hard to differentiate how many elements there were.
Using a padding to separate the contents of one element and the contents
of the next one solves the issue.
Using `inherit` is IMHO more expressive since it means "use the color of
the parent element".
This is particularly useful for CONSUL installations using custom
styles. Consider the following code:
```
h2 {
color: $white;
a {
color: $white;
}
}
```
If we'd like to customize the way headings look, we'd have to override
two colors:
```
h2 {
color: $red;
a {
color: $red;
}
}
```
Consider the scenario where we use `inherit`:
```
h2 {
color: $white;
a {
color: inherit;
}
}
```
Now we only need to override one color to change the styles:
```
h2 {
color: $red;
}
```
Note using `params[:relatable_type].classify` is recognized as a
security risk by some tools. However, it's a false positive, since we've
added constraints to the URL so that paramenter can only have the values
we trust.
This way screen reader users will be notified that the element is the
current one.
I'm not entirely sure whether `aria-current="page"` is more appropriate
than `aria-current="true"`, since it's a general helper which can be
used for any collection of links.
This way we'll be able to apply it to the SDG icon, which is not
included in font-awesome.
Note we're adding a font-icon selector so it's defined before the
admin-menu-icon selector and so in case of conflicting rules the ones in
the admin-menu-icon selector are used.
This way we simplify the HTML and generating similar menus will be
easier. We also improve the experience for screen reader users, who
might have been hearing the icons as text because we weren't using the
`aria-hidden` attribute.
We're still keeping the "icon-" classes for compatibility with CONSUL
installations which might have changed this code.
From a semantic point of view, there's no reason to add a strong
emphasis to the menu items.
Besides, using CSS simplifies the code and is less error-prone. For
instance, the "stats" section didn't have a <strong> tag, and so it was
the only one which wasn't bold.
