The _mostly_ same behavior is what caused the problem though :P I'm curious, did these solutions come to pass because you had to make adjustments based on actual user feedback or was it just a developer trying to think ahead? I'm questioning whether forcing the user to tab to get to the menu item is a hindrance at all or whether the animation was a problem.

Maybe the former could have been solved using ARIA tags or maybe it would require bigger changes to the component itself. Accessibility is a roller-coaster for all these reasons alone.