Accessible Drag Drop

The person who develops text for the HTML specification needs to consider
the following parameters:

- Are there conflicts with the ARIA specification for drag and drop. Early
on we shared our spec. with the WhatWG and they have incorporated some of
the drag/drop features in HTML 5 and they specification may conflict with
what we are doing. For accessibility it is important that we know what is
draggable before a drag and what can receive a drop after a drag has been
initiated. This may be different from HTML 5 strategy
- We need to clearly document how browsers should implement accessible drag
and drop. Although the HTML specification claims device neutrality guidance
must be provided to user agent and document authors how to produce
accessible drag and drop solutions. Prior to HTML 5 and ARIA accessible
drag and drop was not addressed on the Web.
- Is all the functionality that is available for mouse events (such as
visual rendering the fact that elements have been captured for drag) are
available to a keyboard user? If not this should be corrected.
- Can HTML 5 support all moves for drag/drop as specified by ARIA. ....
copy by reference, excecute code on the target, etc. If not, can it be
specified with ARIA.

Rich

Rich Schwerdtfeger
CTO Accessibility Software Group