[DropdownMenu] Escape does not comply with ARIA authoring practices

[dkeele]

Bug report

Current Behavior

When focusing a menu item within a submenu, escape key closes all menus and submenus.

Expected behavior

When focusing a menu item within a submenu, escape key closes only the containing submenu.

Reproducible example

Radix Docs

Additional context

According to ARIA authoring practices:

Escape: Close the menu that contains focus and return focus to the element or context, e.g., menu button or parent menuitem, from which the menu was opened.

Also, here's an example demonstrating correct behavior

Your environment

Software	Name(s)	Version
Radix Package(s)	@radix-ui/react-dropdown-menu	Latest, see docs example.
Browser	Edge, Safari, Firefox, Chrome
Operating System	osx Ventura	13.1

[benoitgrelard]

Hey @dkeele,

In many ways the aria practices aren't pure specs and also leave stuff to interpretation.
This is one of those cases I think.

Escape: Close the menu that contains focus and return focus to the element or context, e.g., menu button or parent menuitem, from which the menu was opened.

One could interpret this both ways, ie. return to the top-level button OR the parent menuitem. It's not explicitly stated that it should be always menuitem for a submenu.

On top of this, as you point out in your PR #1964, MacOS doesn't behave like that.

Ultimately we took this approach for a few reasons:

• submenus already have a key to wind down only the submenu (left arrow in LTR)
• escape key behavior is predictable this way