RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

Cynthia,

 

I think I must have boched the way I explained this idea and led you astray. I think I see how you derived a “drill in” concept from what I said, but it is not what I meant to communicate. So, please erase the portion of your brain contaminated by my prior note and let’s start over.

 

First, I was speaking of a browser feature, not a screen reader feature. I’d do things a bit differently for a screen reader. This browser feature is targeted primarily a keyboard users who can see. Although, it would be useful to screen reader users too.

 

Let’s get concrete .. If you were to log into www.messenger.com <http://www.messenger.com>  and look at the landmark sections, you would see that all the content is contained in 3 primary landmark sections:

1.      Banner

2.      Conversations navigation

3.      Main, which would be labeled “Conversation with Cynthia Shelly” if, for example,  you were conversing with yourself.

 

Now for the feature description … I would like all browsers to provide a landmark navigation feature that would enable users to cycle among those 3 primary sections of the page in their F6 loop. And, to make it clear what is happening, to visually show the section boarders when doing so. The boarder would disappear as you start interacting with the contained content.

 

Now, let’s say there was a block of content that were not contained in one of those three regions – orphaned content. It would also be helpful if the browser recognized that block as well and included it in the F6 loop. This could occasionally create some weirdness, but would more often than not often add usability to a page that has only partially implemented landmark regions.

 

Everything I have written so far  is about “level 0” regions – it had nothing to do with nested regions.

 

While nested regions can be valuable, as you mentioned, they would complicate an F6 loop feature and make it less useful. I would recommend they be ignored by an F6 loop feature. On the otherhand, if there were a command that opened a treeview of the landmark regions on the page, it would be good to include nested regions in that.

 

There are also 3 nested regions on www.messenger.com <http://www.messenger.com> :

1.     Search, which is contained in the banner.

2.      “Messages” region, which is contained inside of main. It holds all the messages in your current conversation.

3.     “New message” region, which is contained inside of main. This is basically the composer for adding a new message to the current conversation.

 

As a screen reader user, I find these nested regions helpful. All the screen readers support them. However, JAWS is the only one that makes it easy to comprehend the nesting.

 

Matt

 

From: Cynthia Shelly [mailto:cyns@microsoft.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 12:00 PM
To: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com>
Cc: public-aria@w3.org
Subject: RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

 

Interesting… 

 

So, we don’t have a concept of leveled landmarks in UIA. They are all added to the one flat loop in Narrator. Edge will use the same landmark mechanism that Windows Universal Apps (a.k.a Windows Store apps) use. I could ask to add a level, but realistically, it would be a while before I could get that into UIA, Narrator and Edge. I’d also likely encounter a fair bit of pushback, due to complexity and a desire to keep something similar to the F6 loop.

 

I generally give site and app authors the advice that more than 5 or 6 landmarks is probably too many. Many sites only need main. Many need header/banner, nav and main. 

 

I’m not sure that a drill-in mechanism is needed. It seems quite complex, and like something that would not be usable for most users.  Can you help me understand why it’s a good thing?

 

Thanks,

Cynthia

 

From: Matt King [mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 1:02 AM
To: Cynthia Shelly <cyns@microsoft.com <mailto:cyns@microsoft.com> >
Cc: public-aria@w3.org <mailto:public-aria@w3.org> 
Subject: RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

 

Cynthia, that’s exactly what I’ve suggested as an option for one way browsers could treat level 0 landmarks. It could be awesome for kb only users … asuming there were options for visuals to go along with it and that orphaned content blocks were included in the loop. It would extend the value of basic landmarks to everyone and give developers a built-in way to see their landmarks come alive.

 

I’ve only used the command line in Linux so don’t know if it has an equivalent to the F6 loop. I haven’t seen anything like in OS 10. Even though OS10 has oodles of keyboard commands, it still seems to assume that you use a mouse … or you use VoiceOver keyboard commands as a mouse replacement, perhaps with the voice turned off.

 

Matt

 

From: Cynthia Shelly [mailto:cyns@microsoft.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 1:51 PM
To: tink@tink.uk <mailto:tink@tink.uk> ; 'Richard Schwerdtfeger' <richschwer@gmail.com <mailto:richschwer@gmail.com> >; 'Gunderson, Jon R' <jongund@illinois.edu <mailto:jongund@illinois.edu> >
Cc: 'Matt King' <a11ythinker@gmail.com <mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com> >; 'James Nurthen' <james.nurthen@oracle.com <mailto:james.nurthen@oracle.com> >; public-aria@w3.org <mailto:public-aria@w3.org> 
Subject: RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

 

One approach I’ve used successfully with long-term Windows users is to say that Landmarks are the F6-loop. In classic Windows apps, you can use the F6 key to jump to big “chunks” of an application, like the toolbar, content area, and taskpane (stuff on the right). Landmarks serve the same purpose. Is there something similar on other operating systems?

 

I also say that “main” is a skip link.

 

From: Léonie Watson [mailto:tink@tink.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 3:18 AM
To: 'Richard Schwerdtfeger' <richschwer@gmail.com <mailto:richschwer@gmail.com> >; 'Gunderson, Jon R' <jongund@illinois.edu <mailto:jongund@illinois.edu> >
Cc: 'Matt King' <a11ythinker@gmail.com <mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com> >; 'James Nurthen' <james.nurthen@oracle.com <mailto:james.nurthen@oracle.com> >; public-aria@w3.org <mailto:public-aria@w3.org> 
Subject: RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

 

From: Richard Schwerdtfeger [mailto:richschwer@gmail.com] 
Sent: 09 February 2016 16:19

On Feb 8, 2016, at 11:35 AM, Gunderson, Jon R <jongund@illinois.edu <mailto:jongund@illinois.edu> > wrote:

 

I am not sure why using the analogy of a “Table of Contents” is getting so much resistance, since it is something that most people can understand and help people to understand what landmarks can do.   I think where the analogy breaks down is that it is not useful when people get into sub sections, so maybe there is a better way to describe the analogy as a “high level table of contents of the content regions on the page”.

 

I agree with Jon on this. It is a table of contents for the page. People understand that. If landmarks are implemented correctly (everything in a landmark) then you indeed can jump to all content sections of the page. 

 

I'm not so sure that's how people do think about landmarks. I did a straw poll of people from the British Computer Association of the Blind forum, Twitter and the A11ySlackers channel. I asked:

 

Do you think of landmarks (banner, main, navigation etc.) as a table of contents for the page (y/n)?

 

Of the 34 people who have responded, 26 said no, 7 said yes, and 1 was unsure. Not extensive research, but suggests we might want to think of a better way to describe landmarks.

 

 

Léonie.

 

-- 

@LeonieWatson tink.uk Carpe diem