Contrib.social

Top-level menu items in the footer region are too far away from their submenu items

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 24 June 2025, about 2 months ago

Problem/Motivation

For both the content region and the footer region the submenu items in the sidebar are aligned to the top of the sidebar when the sidebar is expanded on hover. The content region:

The footer region:

The distance between the top-level menu item for the user page up to the submenu items is too far apart, mostly an issue for people with low-vision relying on zoom software (see also https://scottvinkle.com/blogs/work/proximity-and-zoom). On macOS there are several approaches how to zoom in your screen. With the full screen setting (full_screen.mp4) the submenu items are “just” too far apart from the top-level menu item. With the picture in picture setting (picture_in_picture.mp4), depending on the mode set in the advanced settings, the user is also more likely to unintentionally collapse the submenu (see “When pointer reaches edge”) - a user with tremors will struggle even more in this context. And the small zoom display window is white most of the time while scrolling up, the guard rail on the left is only a light gray border with a contrast of ~1.3:1 while the drop shadow on the right is easier to distinguish.

*We've discussed the problem in the weekly Drupal CMS a11y track meeting last Wednesday. For the record the attendees were, @katannshaw, @rkoller, and @the_g_bomb

Steps to reproduce

Proposed resolution

One idea we came up with, while the submenu items are aligned to the top for top level menu items within the content region, it might be worth to consider to align the submenu items for top level menu items in the footer region to the bottom instead?

In regard to the problem with hover and the unintentional collapse of the submenu, one option might be to follow the suggestion of point 1 in 🌱 Usability Review from the UX Meeting (5 Apr 2024) Active and add a user setting where the user is able to choose the desired interaction pattern. One might be the current mixed interaction, the other a click only approach. But that is out of the scope for this issue and better be suited for a followup issue.

Remaining tasks

User interface changes

Introduced terminology

API changes

Data model changes

Release notes snippet

🐛 Bug report
Status

Active

Version

11.0 🔥

Component

navigation.module

Created by

🇩🇪Germany rkoller Nürnberg, Germany

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