Summary
Three related accessibility defects found during a live Playwright QA pass (real keyboard Tab presses, .focus() reachability checks, and computed-style contrast measurement against a live page). Same defect class as spacious#103 and spacious-pro#78 on the sibling theme.
1. Desktop dropdown menu items expose no ARIA state
Menu items with a submenu (tested 1 and 2 levels deep) have no aria-expanded/aria-haspopup. The submenu is keyboard-reachable via CSS focus-reveal, so this is an announcement gap, not an operability one — same as Spacious.
2. Mobile submenu reveal caret is completely keyboard-inaccessible
Where: mobile menu (≤ ~1024px per the theme's own breakpoints), .sub-toggle element next to any item with children.
Unlike Spacious (which auto-expands every nested item inline on mobile, no interaction needed), Accelerate's mobile menu shows a separate ▾ caret (<span class="sub-toggle">) that must be tapped to reveal its children. That caret has no role, no tabindex, no aria-expanded, and calling .focus() on it directly does not move document.activeElement.
This is distinct from #22 (or its accelerate-pro sibling), which is about the visual arrow icon being missing at certain widths — this issue is about the actual toggle control itself never being reachable by keyboard, at any width where it's the only way to open a submenu. Combined with the mobile menu toggle itself being unreachable by keyboard (a <h3 class="menu-toggle"> with the same defect — tracked in #70), a keyboard-only visitor cannot open the mobile menu or its submenus at all.
Reproduction: At a mobile/tablet width, add a child item to a menu entry, open the mobile menu, and try to reach the submenu caret via Tab — focus never lands on it.
Fix direction: make .sub-toggle a real <button> (or add role="button" tabindex="0"), with aria-expanded reflecting state and a keydown handler for Enter/Space.
3. Default link colour fails WCAG AA contrast — worse than Spacious
rgb(119,204,109), Accelerate's default accent used for sidebar/widget links, measures 1.97 : 1 contrast against white — below even the 3 : 1 large-text minimum. Same measurement method as the Spacious issues linked above.
Confidence
High — all three measured live against a real page and real keyboard input, not inferred from source.
Summary
Three related accessibility defects found during a live Playwright QA pass (real keyboard
Tabpresses,.focus()reachability checks, and computed-style contrast measurement against a live page). Same defect class as spacious#103 and spacious-pro#78 on the sibling theme.1. Desktop dropdown menu items expose no ARIA state
Menu items with a submenu (tested 1 and 2 levels deep) have no
aria-expanded/aria-haspopup. The submenu is keyboard-reachable via CSS focus-reveal, so this is an announcement gap, not an operability one — same as Spacious.2. Mobile submenu reveal caret is completely keyboard-inaccessible
Where: mobile menu (≤ ~1024px per the theme's own breakpoints),
.sub-toggleelement next to any item with children.Unlike Spacious (which auto-expands every nested item inline on mobile, no interaction needed), Accelerate's mobile menu shows a separate ▾ caret (
<span class="sub-toggle">) that must be tapped to reveal its children. That caret has norole, notabindex, noaria-expanded, and calling.focus()on it directly does not movedocument.activeElement.This is distinct from #22 (or its accelerate-pro sibling), which is about the visual arrow icon being missing at certain widths — this issue is about the actual toggle control itself never being reachable by keyboard, at any width where it's the only way to open a submenu. Combined with the mobile menu toggle itself being unreachable by keyboard (a
<h3 class="menu-toggle">with the same defect — tracked in #70), a keyboard-only visitor cannot open the mobile menu or its submenus at all.Reproduction: At a mobile/tablet width, add a child item to a menu entry, open the mobile menu, and try to reach the submenu caret via
Tab— focus never lands on it.Fix direction: make
.sub-togglea real<button>(or addrole="button" tabindex="0"), witharia-expandedreflecting state and a keydown handler for Enter/Space.3. Default link colour fails WCAG AA contrast — worse than Spacious
rgb(119,204,109), Accelerate's default accent used for sidebar/widget links, measures 1.97 : 1 contrast against white — below even the 3 : 1 large-text minimum. Same measurement method as the Spacious issues linked above.Confidence
High — all three measured live against a real page and real keyboard input, not inferred from source.