Dropdown Menu Test: Ultimate Dropdown Menu (UDM)

This is one of several dropdown menus tested on Terrill Thompson's Dropdown Menus Test Page.

Description

This page uses Brothercake's Ultimate Dropdown Menu (UDM).

To exit the menu, press tab again and you should land safely in this paragraph.

UDM is a feature-rich and highly accessible menu system.
The keyboard model is good (can tab into the menu then navigate with arrow keys). However, the Escape key is not well supported: If a submenu is open, the escape key closes the submenu but the menubar no longer has focus (focus seems to jump to the first tabable element on the page).
For screen readers, the menu appears as a nested list and users can navigate it accordingly. This has its advantages, but the result is an interface (especially the keyboard model) that is different for screen reader users than it is for other users. An ideal menu system in my opinion would apply the same standard interface to all users, just as the menus in most software applications do.
UDM4 injects a lot of in-line styles dynamically, which makes it difficult to customize the CSS. There's a configuration JavaScript file that provides a good starting point for playing with different settings and styles, and UDM4 is bundled with a utility that converts that configuration file to CSS once you've figured out a configuration that meets your needs. There are many rules (e.g., no comments allowed in the menu code) but the documentation is very good.
UDM4 is free for non-commercial entities, including colleges and universities, but Terms of Use stipulate that "You must place a visible link from your website back to this one on every page which is using the UDM4 drop down menu."