[Bug 12906] Canvas should not pretend that it can be used to replace some input elements

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12906

Charles Pritchard <chuck@jumis.com> changed:

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--- Comment #1 from Charles Pritchard <chuck@jumis.com> 2011-06-08 15:19:53 UTC ---
Restricting the use of the canvas shadow tree would irretrievably harm
developer abilities to produce assistive user interfaces for users with
cognitive and/or motor disabilities. This is an unbearable and unnecessary
restriction on accessibility developers and users with disabilities.

As for other authors: [input type="text"] is the fall-back input type for form
elements which are not implemented; the canvas type does not "replace" input
elements, but it may be used to progressively enhance them by overriding the
browser's render tree. Consider: [canvas][input type="slider" role="slider"].
This element becomes a text element in browsers which do not support the slider
input type; it is still identified as a slider by ARIA semantics. ARIA provides
a full language for describing custom widgets as developed by individual
authors. Canvas, when used in conjunction with ARIA is fully accessible to
non-sighted users, and can be used in creative ways to assist sighted users.

This discussion has been ongoing since last September, relating to text input;
the HTML Editor and the editor's assistant have had every opportunity to engage
the a11y crowd on the public canvas api mailing list, as well as html a11y. We
did go through a process of considering restrictions on elements within the
canvas DOM. We agreed as a group that such restrictions were unnecessary.

I'm asserting that such restrictions are unconscionable restrictions on
personal freedom. I hope that providing examples of vision-based assistive
interfaces, the HTML editor and the HTML editors assistant will better
understand my position on this. Again, proper handling of ARIA and focus events
within the shadow dom works quite well to support eyes-free interfaces.

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Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2011 15:20:00 UTC