Re: Very large print = refresh-able braille

Wayne wrote:
> If authors design with the possibility of linearization in mind then the browser facilities should do the job. Did I miss something?

Perhaps it is terminology, but ‘providing large print’ implies it is something authors have to do, like people providing paper things providing a large-print paper copy. If the developer has to provide an alternative interface, that’s a big thing to do (in the region of adding 20-40% to development & testing cost). If they avoid some techniques to enable user-driven linearization, that is a lot more reasonable. 

Linearization is, as you say [1], one implementation. The conceptual difference between an override approach (linearization) and the approach you described in #174, is effort & standardised approach.

If the IDE example is to reflow properly, it has to be designed to do so. You can’t just override and say “all block elements take 100% in 1 column”, as lots of things would simply break. Either the developer would need to provide an alternative layout, or there would need to be a standard to identify the “content units” you outlined.

Without a standard to say what a content unit is, even an ad-hoc one such as using some aria-regions as a proxy, that type of customisation isn’t possible.

Therefore, I suggest we try and thread the needle on linearization for 2.1, and support the COGA semantics / personalisation effort for the longer term solution. I hope some of that gets into 2.1, but it isn’t clear that (all of) the semantics standard will be ready in that timeline.


> The central fact is this if refreshable braille is necessary and important enough to require developer pre-planning then so is large  print, because they serve the same function. One that enlargement without word wrapping cannot satisfy.

Not really, no one is arguing with the user-need. The “central fact” is that providing support to a screenreader (and therefore refreshable braille) is a reasonable thing to require of companies because it can be done without doubling your development costs. Our aim should be to also make digital ‘large print’ a reasonable thing to do.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

1] https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/174 

Received on Wednesday, 29 March 2017 08:38:13 UTC