About SC 4.1.3 Status Messages

Please can you say specifically in which circumstances it is incorrect to fail a deficiently marked status message as defined in  WCAG 2.1[*] under SC 1.3.1?
The documented WG's guidance for the term programmatically determinable reads:   
"Several Success Criteria require that content (or certain aspects of content) can be programmatically determined. This means that the
content is authored in such a way that user agents, including assistive technologies, can access the information".
The term PD is highlighted under important new terms up top in WCAG 2.0.
The normative text for  example #1 for the term programmatically determined in WCAG 2.0 states:
"Example 1: Determined in a markup language from elements and attributes that are accessed directly by commonly available assistive technology."
Does the definition including in the above statement not cover what proposed WCAG 2.1 SC for status messages conveys by the words, "programmatically determined through role or properties "? 

So if one uses the proper technique applicable in the situation, "AT can extract and present this information to users in different modalities".

The "without receiving focus" in proposed status message SC is completely irrelevant because an error message placed next to a field or a form-level error message or "one item added to cart" type message ever
receives focus. They are not focusable like links or form controls. 
And if status messages are indeed made focusable  explicitly by the author, the reading / focus order is changed for all users. No  accessibility problem is present then. 
Status messages typically do not receive focus just like a visible text label for a form control or in the context of SC 2.4.4, the contextual content surrounding a link that can be made programmatically determinable never receive focus. 
It is interesting to note that everyone seemed to agree that  the SC on status messages belonged to the Understanding principle till late March 2018 and then it was moved under the Robust principle.
If a user cannot perceive the status message when it is rendered and cannot understand its relationship to the rest of the content on the page, is it not a problem that belongs to the Perceivable principle - specifically SC 1.3.1? And is it not a Level A issue then?

Or, is the purpose of status message SC only limited to content in markup languages that rely on text to expose  info, structure and relations ignoring the non-normative guidance for SC 1.3.1  to make content PD? If so, the SC's wording and understanding text does not make this sufficiently clear.

[*]Refer to content that provides information to the user on the success or results of an action, on the waiting state of an application, on the progress of a process, or on the existence of errors.

Thank you in advance for your clarification. 

Sailesh Panchang

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2018 18:32:35 UTC