Disclosure Widgets
A disclosure widget can reveal – or disclose – hidden content under a heading. Often there is a symbol to indicate that more content can be revealed when the heading is activated
The disclosure widget saves screen space and provides a good overview of the page content.
Typical usability problems with disclosure widgets
Often, disclosure widgets create problems for keyboard users and speech input users.
1 Speech input use: Disclosure controls cannot be activated by voice
When disclosure controls are not implemented using native links or buttons, they are inaccessible (or at least very hard to operate) for sprach inout users.
Video description
A speech input user tries to activate links on a web page. She can get the links to be numbered, but she cannot activate them by saying the number. The disclosure widget controls "Bewilligungsstatistik" and "Verwendungsnachweisstatistik" cannot be activated - they are not implemented as proper controls using links or buttons (or by using ARIA roles). In contrast, the activation of the tabs in the tab panel below works, because the tabs have been implemented as proper links.