Re: WCAG 2.2 status update - Visual indicators

Hi David,

There is activity, and I’d like that to continue as it will be useful at whatever point we can use it (i.e. now or Silver). I’m just conscious that it still appears to be at the experimental stage, i.e. how would X text impact controls of type Y, Z, A, B etc.

It is a particularly difficult one because “visual indication” is a wide range of things, multiplied by the number of user-interface components & styles there are. It comes with a built-in high-bar because there are so many connotations.

Regarding the fallback proposal, it seems like a good idea but… I’ve been running a plugin that does that, and I’m not convinced the results are desirable.  I.e. it generally does work (things are outlined / underlined), but:

  *   Sometimes it can be overwhelming due to the density of some interfaces;
  *   Navigation bars (e.g. left-hand ones in w3C specs) are less readable, and I’d argue have group-visual indictors which are not accounted for (yet).
  *   Sometimes you’d need to reverse the colour scheme (e.g. for buttons on light/dark backgrounds);
  *   There are some quirks where sometimes outlines don’t work, sometimes box-shadow works better, and vice-versa. I haven’t figured out why yet, which makes it hard to pin down the author’s requirement :-/
  *   Plugins can be good/useful, but for the intended audience for this SC it seems less helpful.

Knowing that the solution solves the problem is key here. So again, I don’t want to quash anything, but realistically we’re in the ‘refine the SC and get the docs approved’ stage for 2.2 now.

Cheers,

-Alastair