- From: Martin Kliehm <w3c@kliehm.com>
- Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:57:35 +0100
- To: HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
Dear accessibility task force and canvas sub-team, I'd like to draw your attention to the final draft of the WebGL specification [1] that addresses the 3D context of the canvas element. At least the same accessibility issues apply in a 3D context as in a 2D context: providing a shadow DOM, exposure to AT, keyboard access, setting focus, showing a focus ring and the caret position. I would like to suggest that the canvas sub-team gets in contact with the editors at the Khronos group to share their findings, thus enabling better accessibility in a 3D context. I would also suggest that the W3C officially gets involved in the development of that spec. At TPAC I pointed out that 3D possibly requires further features for accessibility: - In a gaming context, audio cues, earcons, a sound radar, tactile feedback, or speech synthesis are important. Also bear in mind the issues of hardware acceleration bypassing the CPU and accessibility APIs. - In a social context (Second Life) the main issues are: lack of alt text for user generated content, users need a summary/grouping of objects, the ability to filter nearby objects (people/items), and again screenreader support. In particular Eelke Folmer of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nevada did some valuable research on that topic. WebGL is arriving strongly this year in browsers, and it would be important not to leave any people behind. Cheers, Martin [1] https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/specs/latest/
Received on Tuesday, 8 February 2011 13:58:12 UTC