[css3-ui] scoping 'nav-index' (or tabindex) for large document use cases

One of the issues that came up in the joint meeting between CSS and
WAI Protocols & Formats at TPAC (on October 31) was the 'nav-index'
property in http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-ui/#nav-index .  (This is
the second of two messages (on different topics) to follow up on that
discussion.)

There was a brief discussion that both 'nav-index' and tabindex are
difficult for authors to use on large pages.  This was because of
the impression that one of the use cases is likely to be doing a
small amount of reordering of the tabbing order.  In particular, I
think the following two use cases may have been brought up:

  (1) The author wants to say that the tabbing order (sequential
  navigation order) should be assigned a certain way for large
  sections of the page, each of which contain many navigable items.
  For example, consider two div elements, each with a large number
  of links in it, where the author wants all of the elements in the
  second div to appear in the tabbing order before all of the
  elements in the first div.  This currently requires assigning
  tabindex, at a minimum, to all the tab-navigable elements in at
  least one of the divs, if not all the tab-navigable elements in
  the whole document.  It would be easier if there were a way to do
  this by applying styles only to the divs (and perhaps their
  container; see item (2)).

  (2) The author wants to say that the tabbing order (sequential
  navigation order) should be assigned a certain way for a group of
  elements within a specific container without having to specify the
  order for everything else around them.  Right now, saying that two
  links inside a div should be reached in the order opposite the
  default one, but should appear in-sequence relative to the content
  outside of the div, requires not only specifying 'nav-index' or
  tabindex on the two links, but also on all the other links in the
  document.

It seems useful to be able to address these use cases by assigning
properties or attributes to only a few elements rather than having
to do so globally.

(Note the desire for the tabbing order to be the way it is may be
the result of positions assigned in the style sheet, which is why
the tabbing order may belong in the style sheet as well.)

I don't recall concrete proposals for how to address these issues,
but they seem likely to be worth addressing in css3-ui.

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                           http://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂

Received on Sunday, 20 November 2011 23:22:48 UTC