Re: Proposal: User Interface Independence for Accessible Rich Internet Applications

Hi James, and Chris,

I finally got to this. I want to thank you for posting it. Thank you both
for making the proposal. I don't think anyone disagrees with the need to
remove the device and OS dependencies.

In principle I like the approach of having device independent events. Here
is some feedback on the proposal:

1. Regarding UI Change Request Events than what you are showing:

open (and would this apply to expand/collapse?)
close - not sure escape is quite right for all situations
backspace - this is not the same as delete on Windows systems

2. All UI events

What happens with these and standard controls in HTML 5 when the controls
are not repurposed?

3. Regarding ARIA Authoring Practices we would need to set some guidance as
to what events each UI component should support.

4. Regarding Drag and Drop

I think we need an Drag Menu event for the target. There may be multiple
operations that can be executed on the target. ARIA has a dropeffect
property that will allow for a menu to be rendered.

4. Assistive Technology Identification and Notification

Regarding indicating if a screen reader is accessing the web content or a
screen magnifier is accessing the content. This may be a privacy issue. I
think we may need to change what these are called. It is possible that this
information could be retrieved and sent off to a system that gathers
statistics about users. For example, those that access Facebook with a
screen reader might result in the assessment that the Facebook person is
blind. In typical personalization scenarios where users ask for content be
delivered in a specific way we have avoided making statements like this. I
think we may need to make this more generic.

I don't have a problem with the magnifier API but this removes the
possibility of tieing the notification with a drawing call such as with
draw focus ring in canvas. Also, focus in rings  in canvas follow the
drawing path so the author would need to manage the polygon and a
cursorRect separate from Canvas.

What about caret? Platforms use different accessibility APIs for caret.

Rich


Rich Schwerdtfeger
CTO Accessibility Software Group



From:	James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
To:	public-canvas-api@w3.org
Date:	08/30/2010 04:09 AM
Subject:	Proposal: User Interface Independence for Accessible Rich
            Internet Applications
Sent by:	public-canvas-api-request@w3.org




The following proposal is for consideration by the PF Working Group, DOM
Working Group, and HTML Working Group. It specifically solves a few
outstanding accessibility problems, but has much broader implications, and
could affect several recommendations, including ARIA 2, DOM 3, and HTML 5.
(Note: duplicate emails are going out to a few relevant lists.)

Thanks,
James Craig

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