When users come to a certain page within our tool, content is contained in two different accordions. Content they've seen on prior screens is contained in a closed accordion, so that they can still reference it if needed. New content is also shown within an accordion, but which is open by default, so the user sees it.
There are some cases where the second accordion does not have any content in it. So the question is, how do you treat that accordion, or does it even stay an accordion?
The way I have it now is that there's a message, that tells the user "nothing to see here." It's closed to save space, but they can still open it if they want. If they do open it, they see the same message.
The other opinion is to not let user open something that doesn't have content, and just make it a box or something static, basically an accordion without the expandable + and -. To me, that might seem weird to users, who might wonder why the accordion isn't opening.
Should the user be able to open an empty accordion, or should it be closed with controls removed? What seems more consistent or predictable? Any accessibility issues here? Thoughts appreciated.
