Accessibility Issue in Arranging the Menu Items: I need a combobox for selecting the parent item and a combobox for selecting the item position

[javad2000]

Hello
I shall firstly thank WordPress team for their utmost attention to accessibility standards, which makes WordPress unique among all CMSs. All WordPress
core features are fairly Accessible for me as a blind person who uses screen reader (JAWS), but I always have problems with rearranging the menu items.
Although the menu-items are also very accessible for a blind person and I can re-arrange them very well, this process is very time consuming for me, because;
for example, if I want to send a menu-item from position 16 to position 11, I have to press “Move Up” 5 times. The problem is:
I don’t have any combobox that assigns the mother-item and the item-position. Therefore, I have to adjust the positions by moving each item one by one,
level by level.

Suppose I have a menu with lots of sub-menus and sub-items. Now, I want to add 6 new sub-items to the different menus. Of course, when I add them to the
menu, they are at the end of menu. If I want to bring each item to a certain position near the center of menu, I have to click “Move up” and “Move down”
one by one for many many times over and over. It takes me about 2 hours to rearrange those menu items. I hope I could explain clearly.

Solution:
Beside each menu item, there is a link called “Edit Menu Item”. When I click on the link, a set of options open up: move up, move down, name, etc. I would
like to have two other options as well: mother-item, and position. For example, I adjust the mother-item of “Audio Translation” as “Translation”, and I
adjust its position to “2”, which means subitem number 2 under “Translation”. I hope I could explain clearly what I mean. If I can adjust the menu positions
with comboboxes, I will not have to click “move up” and “move down” many many times.

[audrasjb]

Hi @javad2000 and many thanks for this ticket,

We are still working on a similar ticket: #40678 - Editing menus in WP admin for blind people. Of course, feel free to comment this other one as well.
I think we can keep both tickets for now because what you offer brings additional elements to the other ticket.

I will work to integrate your solutions on my work on the other ticket.

Cheers,
Jb

Related: #40678

[audrasjb]

Workaround

[juliemoynat]

Hi,

I think that's a good idea!

@audrasjb, I'm not sure that @javad2000 can see your animated image. :)

In your example, you add a "Move to position:" field with "1", "2", "3", "4" options.
Can we add the total number of items to help a little bit more?

"Move to position:"

• 1 of 8
• 2 of 8
• 3 of 8
• etc.

@javad2000 also needs another field to define an item as a child. Can we do as we have it for "Pages"?

"Parent:"

• (no parent)
• Blog page
• Sample page
• W.org
• Google
• etc.

[afercia]

I will work to integrate your solutions on my work on the other ticket.

I'd recommend to keep things separated :) It's far better to have smaller patches, focused on a single issue, rather than big ones that are difficult to review, test, and they often go stale pretty soon.

[javad2000]

Hi again
I investigated the problem on several PCs with several versions of JAWS and NVDA. About the first two problems:
1- Accessibility problem for adding new menu items:
2- Accessibility problem of Screen Options:

I found out the following:
I have a multisite with a main site (www.d-dar.com) and a sub-site (www.d-dar.com/template/). The first two problems are fully solved in the main site if I use NVDA 2020, and partly solved if I use JAWS 2020. However, those two problems still exist on the subsite.
I wonder why the menu editor of the main site works quite well, but the menu editor of the subsites do not work at all.
I asked a sighted person to use the menu-editor of the subsite with mouse, but the problem exists for sighted people as well. They could not add any custom link to the menu.
I deactivated all plugins. I used the default theme (Twentytwenty) for both the main site and the subsite, but no luck. Neither blind people nor sighted people could use the menu editor. They could not add custom-links to the menu.
I added a fresh new site to the multisite, but the fresh new site had the same problem with its menus. I cannot use its menu editor, while I can use the menu editor of the main site efficiently.

About the third problem:
3- Accessibility Problem when rearranging and reordering menu items:

I had opened a ticket and a feature-request topic 3 years ago:
​https://wordpress.org/support/topic/accessibility-issue-in-arranging-the-menu-items/
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43305

But no luck after 3 years. I hope WordPress accessibility team will solve the problem via a plugin or preferrably via the core ASAP.
Best Regards

[javad2000]

In addition to those two comboboxes in the Menu Editor Page, we might have those two comboboxes on page/post editor dashboard as well. This helps us assign pages/posts directly to a menu item at a certain position from the page editor dashboard.

[wmalexander]

Hello,

This ticket has been dormant for a while - but I wanted to see if there may be any chance of further action related to this issue. I received the following request from one of our users related to this exact issue:

---

We are familiar with the "Edit Menu" option for each of the menu items, but the
feature is very limited and only allows a couple of movement changes. It would
be great if this menu had an option to move as child to X, or move as parent to
X with much more flexibility.

In the main menu screen, using the NVDA screen reader, I am noticing that
whenever I move menu items around, if I am moving the item up through the menu
structure, as it moves in and out of menus to its destination, other menu items
get included with the original item during the dragging process, which
completely rearranges the entire menu structure.

The only work-around I have found is to not move the item horizontally, but
instead continue moving it vertically through all of the existing menu items
until I reach the new location.

I wonder if perhaps the new WordPress updates address this?

---

Any room for further discussion and or action related to this issue? Thanks!

[wmalexander]

Hello - just hoping this item at least has room for discussion? I tried editing the menu using a screen reader myself and it is, honestly, a terrible experience.

[william.alexander]

Hello,

Just poking this ticket again. It looks like the related tickets that are mentioned have been closed, but this issue is certainly unresolved. Having tried myself to edit the menu using a screen reader, it’s clear that the menu editor is close to unusable for a blind user.

[wmalexander]

👋 Still hopeful that there is a possibility that this accessibility issue could receive some attention.