Re: Inline links with large-enough activation (touch) target (rough idea)

On 14/11/2016 14:52, David MacDonald wrote:
> I presented the touch target size proposal to the Toronto accessibility
> group... their response regarding the 48 vs 24 coarse vs fine point
> requirements was
>
> "How do we know when when we should serve up one vs another. Seems like
> a difficult thin."g to sniff accurately for give the wide rage of
> devices..."
>
> We'll need to solve that I think...

Assuming this would then be part of understanding/techniques again, 
following approaches come to mind:

- seeing that it's not possible to reliably detect a touchscreen, and - 
particularly in multi-input scenarios - it's not easy to know for sure 
even if a touchscreen can be detected whether or not a user will 
actually use that or some other input device instead: unless you are 
designing/developing for a closed system where you know for a fact which 
type of input(s) will be available (e.g. embedded system only to be used 
for touchscreen-enabled point of sales terminals, or a system for 
content only to be used on an ATM style device without touchscreen but 
with physical keyboard-like buttons on the side of the display), 
developers should assume that at some point or other their content/app 
will be used on a touchscreen; see also "when any [...] machine could 
have a touch interface, [...] proceed as if they all do" 
https://medium.com/let-me-repost-that-for-you-zeldman/jason-grigsby-on-design-beyond-touch-e862b699d426#.9go7knctr

- offer the user a mechanism as part of the app/site UI to switch 
between "mouse-friendly" and "touch-friendly" interface. this is the 
approach that, for instance, Microsoft Office 2013 uses (See slide 137 
https://patrickhlauke.github.io/getting-touchy-presentation/#137)

- use CSS Media Queries Level 4's "any-pointer" feature to ascertain if 
a coarse pointer is present (indicating at least one of the inputs 
available to the user is coarse, e.g. a touchscreen) 
https://drafts.csswg.org/mediaqueries-4/ (note my article on using CSS 
MQ4 detection carefully https://dev.opera.com/articles/media-features/, 
as well as recent discussion on changing the spec to drop the idea of 
"primary" vs "rare" inputs https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/690)

- use third-party libraries like https://github.com/ten1seven/what-input 
to detect as soon as a user switches between using a mouse/touchscreen - 
then it's up to the app/site to decide what to do (immediately switch 
out the interface to coarse or fine pointer optimized? present the user 
with a dialog asking if they now want to switch to the type of input 
that they just used? etc)

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke

Received on Monday, 14 November 2016 14:27:40 UTC