- From: Shelby Moore <shelby@coolpage.com>
- Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:45:24 -0400
- To: shelby@coolpage.com
- Cc: "Alan Gresley" <alan@css-class.com>, "Boris Zbarsky" <bzbarsky@mit.edu>, "www-style list" <www-style@w3.org>
I just want to add a joke that has been going round lately, but actually there is a serious point behind it. The "we must defend accessibility by restricting what users want" reminds me of what Steve Jobs purportedly wrote in email to a customer recently about the interference with the iPhone 4 antenna, "Just don't hold it that way". >>> Perhaps I can allocate more time thinking about this at some point, >>> because CSS as it is now really frustrates me. The tsuris seems mostly >>> to >>> revolve around the fact that CSS is not designed to support the new Web >>> applications which want to keep all their content inside the viewport >>> and >>> create overflowed scrolled sub-areas instead of overflowing the >>> viewport. >> >> >> Perhaps this is due to the fact that someone using a keyboard can not >> easy scroll the page and the overflowed scrolled sub-areas (which are >> really boxes with overflow:auto) and switch between them. The focus >> either has to be on the viewport or the overflowed scrolled sub-areas >> and this focus has to be changed to scroll either one. >> >> This is an accessibility issue. > > Afaics, that is an orthogonal concern, which can be handled by the UA. > > For example, the UA may provide Page Up and Page Down keys, and may use > the the Tab key and/or shortcut keys to move the focus around. Also the > UA should give some indication of focus-- afaik they do not now. > > It is really a failed assumption that all web apps need to scroll > contiguously in the viewport. Imo, that was a design error. If you are > really concerned about accessibility and usability, then just ponder the > how unusable an application is if you are only looking at one tile of it > and have to scroll the whole app around. > > Rather the web app designer can better separate concerns within the app, > and segregate work flows into areas that can be sorted by priorities. > > The keyboard access is an orthogonal issue and UAs need to improve in that > area. > > >
Received on Friday, 22 October 2010 18:45:59 UTC