RE: tabindex="" feedback

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Ian Hickson
Envoyé : jeudi 24 avril 2008 11:47
À : whatwg@whatwg.org; public-html
(I deleted the whatwg ML to avoid crosspost, tell me if I did wrong)

>> 2) Using tabindex=0 or -1 to indicate whether an element can have focus 
>> is arguably bogus IMHO. Whether something is focusable depends on the UA 
>> or the device. I don't see any reason why apps would use <span 
>> tabindex=0 onclick onkeypress> instead of just using links, form 
>> controls, or contenteditable="" (depending on what you're doing). (If 
>> you'd do this because form controls are hard to style, then HTML isn't 
>> the place to address that problem.)
>
>While I agree in principle, it's clear that there is a demand for custom 
>widgets, and since people are going to do it anyway, we might as well 
>allow them to do it in an at least semi-accessible way.

Some elements are not focusable by defaut (e.g. <div>) but if we want to be
able to focus them via Javascript, we have to have a way of adding them to
the stack of focusable elements in the page. This is the way I understand
the basic functioning of Jeremy Keith's Hijax:

myElement.tabIndex = -1;
myElement.focus();

Considering how we're still stuck with older UA's for quite a long time
(thus knowing that ARIA's rudeness attributes will be copiously ignored),
being able to address accessibility issues in these as well would force us
to, indeed, keep the possibility to add a tabindex property to any random
element.

So it's not so much bogus as addressing older user agents and is a bit
larger than widgets per se.

--
Kind regards,
Stéphane Deschamps
FT/ROSI/DDSI/SI CLIENT/DPROD/PATAL/ IT Accessibility
  Web HCI expert
  orange / france telecom group 



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Received on Thursday, 24 April 2008 16:08:17 UTC