Comments and questions on latest UA guidelines

Below are some comments and questions that have come up as we (IBM Special
Needs) looked at the February 10th UA Guidelines while re-evaluating our
Home Page Reader product. Our comments are preceded by CL.

4.1.4 [Priority 2]
     Follow operating system conventions for user interface design, user
agent configuration (including configuration profiles), product
     installation and documentation, and accessibility flags and
interfaces.

CL: Could you define accessibility flags?

4.4.12 [Priority 1]
     Allow the user to turn on and off support for spawned windows.

CL: Are there any user agents today that provide this control feature?

4.4.13 [Priority 3]
     Allow the user to turn on and off automatic page forwarding.

CL: Is this referring to when there is a link that is automatically
activated after a script-specified amount of time? Are there any user
agents today that provide this control feature?

5.3.3 [Priority 1]
     Allow the user to search for a link based on its attribute values.
5.5.4 [Priority 1]
     Allow the user to search for a form control based on its attribute
values.

CL: I have seen several questions about which attribute values but no
answers. We are really interested in knowing which specific attribute
values an end user would be interested in searching for.  Should these
checkpoints really be  a priority 1?

5.3.4 [Priority 1]
     Allow the user to move the focus to a link based on its integer
(tabbing-order) position.

CL: I assume this means, for example,  moving directly to link 5 out of 25
links on a page. Do users really consider this a priority 1 type of
feature?

5.3.8 [Priority 1]
     Allow the user to navigate among elements with associated long
descriptions.

5.3.9 [Priority 2]
     Allow the user to search linked long description text (i.e., in
another document). In case of a match, the focus should be moved to the
link in
     the current document.

CL: Why would a user want to navigate just among elements with long
descriptions or search for text that is just in long descriptions? I don't
think users would think of elements with long descriptions as a set or
collection of elements like they think of links, tables, or forms. They may
think of images with their ALT text and long descriptions as a set. Even
so, I don't think 5.3.8 is a Priority 1.

6.2.4 [Priority 2]
     Allow the user to navigate sequentially among block elements (e.g.,
paragraphs, lists and list items, etc.)

CL: Can this checkpoint  fully define block elements for clarification?


Cathy Laws
IBM Special Needs Systems Development
E-mail: claws@us.ibm.com

Received on Monday, 1 March 1999 15:13:54 UTC