Add aria-current to output of Walker_Nav_Menu for front-end navs

[williampatton]

With recent passes on navigations to add aria-current the idea was brought up about placing it on frontend menus too.

See #40833 and other related tickets here https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?keywords=~aria-current

Modifications would be required inside the Walker_Nav_Menu class. I will look closer at the required modifications but something as simple as this could be all that is needed:

if ( in_array( 'current-menu-item', $classes, true ) ) {
	$atts['aria-current'] = 'page';
}

[chetan200891]

Created patch to add aria-current to aria-current to output of Walker_Nav_Menu for front-end navs

[chetan200891]

I have attached patch 43191.diff to add aria-current to aria-current to output of Walker_Nav_Menu for front-end navs.

[afercia]

@chetan200891 thanks! I think the nav items have a $item->current property, maybe it would be better to use that? The new attribute should be documented in the nav_menu_link_attributes filter docblock.

[chetan200891]

Updated patch.

[chetan200891]

@afercia Thanks for your suggestion. I have updated patch 43191.2.diff based on your suggestion.

[sami.keijonen]

Thanks @chetan200891 ! Somehow I could not test your patch, I got two different files question. Could be that it's just me and SVN.

Just in case I uploaded patch 43191.3.diff.

I tested using default themes and couple of random themes from .org. And all seems to work, also in widget menu.

But aria-current is not outputted if theme uses default wp_page_menu as a fallback in wp_nav_menu. Not sure if this is a problem.

[afercia]

But aria-current is not outputted if theme uses default wp_page_menu as a fallback

I believe wp_page_menu() uses a different default walker, which is Walker_Page see walk_page_tree(). I guess that should go in a separate ticket.

[DrewAPicture]

Assigning to mark the good-first-bug as "claimed".

[afercia]

In 42808:

Accessibility: Themes: use aria-current for the Walker_Nav_Menu current link.

The aria-current attribute is a simple, effective way to help assistive
technologies users orientate themselves within a list of items. Continues the
introduction in core of aria-current after [42440], [41683], [41359], and [41371].

Props williampatton, chetan200891, sami.keijonen.
Fixes #43191.

[audrasjb]

Reopening for 4.9.9 consideration as seen during accessibility team bug-scrub meeting.