Re: Ease of testing canvas accessible subtree

On Feb 5, 2010, at 11:35 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Feb 2010, Philip Taylor wrote:
>> 
>> To develop and test an accessible canvas application with focus 
>> management, I'd expect it would be much easier if the author could see 
>> the bitmap and the fallback content simultaneously, using their normal 
>> mouse and keyboard input to interact with either version, and check that 
>> both representations stay in sync and that the focus highlighting is 
>> handled correctly. Once they've finished testing, they would want the 
>> published version to work like it currently does (i.e. users are shown 
>> the bitmap if possible, else the fallback content is shown instead).
>> 
>> Is this possible with the current spec? If not, I think there should be 
>> a way to make the fallback content and bitmap visible together, e.g. 
>> <canvas showfallback>...</canvas> (and authors can add some CSS to the 
>> fallback content so it's rendered in a sensible position), to help with 
>> this kind of testing.
> 
> That's a good point. I'm skeptical about allowing elements outside of 
> <canvas> be focused while drawFocusRing() renders, because that means the 
> screen would have two focus rings... but maybe that's ok?

Having that would (as Phillip points out) be useful in the course of development, but I don't think it would be good to ship such a mode in production. Perhaps it should be a mode provided by the UA as a development aid, rather than a feature in markup. I think all the major browsers offer integrated developer tools now, either built-in or as a supported add-on.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 5 February 2010 20:15:30 UTC