UNavigationMenu not keyboard accessible with items that have children and are a link themselves

[Evertvdw]

Environment

Not relevant, see playground.

Is this bug related to Nuxt or Vue?

Nuxt

Package

v4.x

Version

4.8.2

Reproduction

https://play.ui.nuxt.com/#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

Description

I pasted the first example in the docs from UNavigation (https://ui.nuxt.com/docs/components/navigation-menu#items). The issue is that top level items can have its own 'to' property but also have children. When tabbing through this list there is no way to open the dropdown and access the children. Pressing space/enter will navigate to the item link.

I believe the dropdown chevron should be focusable by keyboard explicitly and that would solve this problem. I added tabindex="0" to the linkTrailing slot and that already works pretty well.

Additional context

No response

Logs

[coderabbitai]

⚠️ Possible Duplicate Issue(s)

• UNavigationMenu fails axe standards #6481

🔗 Related PRs

#6579 - fix(CommandPalette): only scroll to highlighted item when focused [closed]

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[pupuking723]

I'd like to investigate this if a maintainer agrees with the direction. I would start by comparing the NavigationMenu keyboard behavior for link-only items versus items that also have children, then look for the smallest change that exposes the submenu to keyboard users without changing normal link navigation. I'll wait for confirmation or assignment before opening a PR.