Release Notes

Dear university web community members,

We’re pleased to share the latest updates and improvements to our shared content management system, Sitefinity. These changes support our ongoing efforts to enhance site functionality, accessibility, and user experience.

Web Accessibility

Top Horizontal Nav and Enhanced Nav Improvements:

• Menu items that expand into submenus now correctly announce their state (open or closed) to screen reader users — previously this was not working.
• Decorative icons and arrows are now hidden from screen readers so they don't create confusing or meaningless announcements.
• Users navigating by keyboard alone can now press Escape to close an open submenu, matching standard web behavior. Esc and enter keys should now close and open submenu buttons respectively.
• Menu items that don't lead to their own page (are not links and are used only to group other links) are now properly recognized as buttons.
• Fixed a broken internal reference that could prevent the mobile menu button from working correctly with assistive technology.
• Cleaned up some inconsistent behavior between the desktop and mobile versions of the menus.

Side navigation accessibility improvements

• The current page link is now announced to screen reader users, not just shown visually with a highlight.
• The expand/collapse buttons for menu sections with sub-items now announce which section they belong to (e.g., "Toggle SharePoint Training submenu") instead of a generic, repeated "dropdown arrow" label.
• Redundant role=button aria code was removed from existing button elements, resolving double announcement for screen readers.

You can find release notes on Web Central Site. If you have questions about these updates or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out by using the ISS Service Portal.

Thank you,

ISS Web Development team