[Bug 11239] Canvas support accessible caret tracking independent of Focus Ring tracking

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11239

--- Comment #36 from Rich Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com> 2011-05-04 13:41:30 UTC ---
Ian,

I am not going to go point by point with you and waste another hour of my day
on what was already agreed upon by the chairs. 

It is a common practice to have Rich Internet Application components manage the
visual focus for the descendants they manage. The intent of drawFocusRing is to
allow elements that have focus to show visible focus and for those elements to
show the visual focus around the child that they manage. This happens in UI
component libraries, like Dojo. 

To illustrate further, while I understand that keyboard focus is on a tree
widget the visual focus should be on the descendant that it manages. When you
operate a tree widget you are not visually operating on the container yet the
author has given a visual point of regard on the managed descendant. This is
indeed consistent with WCAG 2. Authors can then use aria-activedescendant to
notify the assistive technology what child is the one they should operate on
with focus. This works and it works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE. I can
provide you numerous code examples from the Open Ajax Alliance that we will be
using for browser testing for ARIA.

There is nothing wrong with this authoring practice and it is used extensively
throughout the Web. Since the canvas subtree is being used to generate the
accessibility API mapping in browsers and these are common and accepted
authoring practices that are also accessible and supported accessibly on
multiple browsers then canvas's drawFocusRing must support this functionality.

Now, if your concern is over the name "focus" in drawFocusRing I would support
a name change or some clarity in its description.  

If this is unacceptable you are welcome to open a defect post last call but the
capability to support drawing of a visible focus ring or point of regard must
be supported for accessibility. 

For the record, my job is not to promote idealistic authoring practices. My job
is to ensure that authors have the tools to produce accessible solutions as
consistent with their development goals as is technically possible.

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Received on Wednesday, 4 May 2011 13:41:37 UTC