Tabbing into a hidden navigation menu

Question

This is a question about the interaction between navigation via keyboard (tabbing) and initially-hidden navigation items. I’m asking from both a UX and accessibility perspective.

My site has a slide-out menu at ‘mobile’ viewports (slides out from the left when triggered by a hamburger button). So, my question is:

What would your expected behaviour be if/when the tab sequence reaches the navigation menu WITHOUT the user having explicitly revealed the menu via the hamburger? Would you expect it to:

1. Reveal/open the navigation menu and place focus on the first menu item (essentially the same action as if they’d triggered the hamburger)? or
2. Skip the nav menu entirely and go straight to the page content?

Currently I’ve yet to implement either option, which means that users can tab into the nav menu but not have it revealed, which of course is terrible (leaving them tabbing around in the dark, so to speak).

(Between the hamburger and the navigation menu — in the source order — there is also a ‘skip navigation’ link (hidden until focused) which adds extra decision-routing complications, but in the interest of keeping this to a single question let’s ignore that for now).

Answer 1

Option 2 is expected behaviour. It would be unexpected for the menu to open if a user decided not to click the button to open it (as otherwise why have a button at all?)

Also having a "skip navigation" link between the menu button and the menu on mobile makes no sense (as not opening the menu is the way of skipping the navigation) so make sure you add display: none to it on the mobile variation of the site.

I would also examine whether "skip navigation" is needed on the desktop version of the site in it's current location, or whether this should be moved before all other content and changed to a "skip to main content" link instead, but without seeing it that is hard to say (just something to consider).