Complex navigation system

Hello list,

I am developing a web site for a health/medical institution, and I'm 
facing a big issue now, which is trying to build a clean and 
intuitive navigation system (the web site has a very deep hierarchy).

Every page must stick to XHTML 1.1 and WAI 1.0 Guidelines Triple A.
Whichever the solution, it must degrade gracefully on older browsers 
and be usable with javascript and CSS disabled.

Here's how the page looks like:

               _______________________ __________
               |                      ||         |
               |   banner             ||         |
               |                      ||         |
               |______________________||         |
_____________ _______________________ |         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
| navigation ||                      || side bar|
|   menu     ||                      ||         |
|(188-200 px)||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||  page content        ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|            ||                      ||         |
|_____________|______________________||_________|

Obviously, those are not frames, and no tables are used for layout 
purposes, just CSS.

My guessing is I can only use server-side solutions, to generate a 
HTML (read: XHTML) fragment for inclusion in the main page template.
That's ok, the web site is hosted on a IIS 4.0 Server, so ASP 
scripting is available.

There's another requirement: menus must be easily maintained, other 
people will have to work on it regularly, so an external text file or 
something like that would be to great avail.

I have searched the Internet and found Text2Tree, an ASP component 
that builds a navigation tree, generating the code from a base file 
(.mdb or .txt) which holds the menus structure:

<http://www.asp-components.de/index2.asp?tool=tree&lang=en>

There is one problem, though... I can't see the way to tweak the HTML 
it generates: attribute values are not enclosed between quotes, 'img' 
elements do not have 'alt' attributes, javascript event handlers are 
not lowercase (onMouseOver), and elements miss an end tag (<.br />, 
<.img src="image.gif" alt="" />)...

I'm back where I started, Text2Tree is no use to me... :-(

I kindly ask you: can you point me to a different software which does 
all the things I need, or just suggest a better solution for such 
complex navigation system, and release me from my nasty headaches? :-)

Thanks in advance for any input you will provide.
-- 
Italian greetings,
Gabriele Caniglia.

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