RE: Haptics CSS extension proposal

> Daniel Glazman wrote on Monday, June 14, 2010 1:22 AM
> Forwarding a message from Kom Grönholm (Nokia) that did not 
> make it to the list.
> 
> Tactile feedback is based on the sense of touch, for example 
> vibrating the screen or giving a more realistic sense of a 
> physical object when the user touches the UI.  As the 
> physical feel of an element can be considered a part of its 
> style, we're proposing to extend CSS to allow assigning the 
> tactile feedback style to web elements. According to our 
> studies the most convenient and natural way to specify haptic 
> feedback is CSS. We also considered implementing haptics for 
> web using WAI-ARIA but came to the conclusion that haptics is 
> not (just) an accessibility feature although it can be used 
> for improving accessibility as well.

This would imply a need to extend WCAG as well.  Some people 
are sensitive to vibrations and would need to be able to 
specify something like "vibrate:none ! important" in their 
personal style sheet.  Or would this be handled 
as a preference by the user agent?

My specific need for tactile CSS, as an web content creator 
for a public transportation agency, would be to be able to 
allow following a route path as of a public transit bus route.  
So there would need to be a style for moving on or off the line 
representing the route.  There might also be a need to support 
directionality, as in a route traveling a street in one 
direction might allow the cursor to be moved easily in the 
direction of vehicle travel but to present more resistance in 
the opposite direction (but still less resistance than moving
off the route entirely).  Additional styles might be needed for
cross streets and transfer points.

Hope this helps,
Charles Belov
SFMTA Webmaster
www.sfmta.com

Received on Monday, 14 June 2010 19:30:57 UTC