Re: [alreq] Should progress bars in HTML progress and meter elements be read RTL? (#259)

This has been coming up often in bidi UX conversations and I don't have a good enough answer to it. On the one hand, it seems intuitive that the RTL progression of the text would be expanded to cover the directional behavior of progress bar and similar elements, but on the other hand, my experience shows that this could easily become problematic for some UI elements with significant roles on any specific UI canvas; e.g. considering video player time progress bar, is it also expected that its direction is RTL in an RTL UI context? How about the playback control icons (▶️, ⏯, ◀️)?

Since I'm unaware of any UX cognitive studies showing, I usually stick with the recommendation of _Persian Graphical User Interface Specifications and Guidelines_, [chapter 2, section 3](https://github.com/shervinafshar/Persian-HIG/blob/main/en/PersianHIG_EN_Main4_Chapter2.md#23-specifics-of-bi-directional-gui-design):

> The position of user interface elements should be compatible with the experiences and expectations of the users (Principle 1). Such experiences and expectations may not be related to writing direction. As a rule of thumb, the interface elements that users read like normal text should follow writing direction. For other cases, you have to find out how they are traditionally placed in the locale you are targeting. Many expected placements actually follow left-to-right conventions even in right-to-left locales. The reason is that they either follow mathematical direction (like a progress bar) which is universally left-to-right, or they follow some real world equipment which have left-to-right orientation (such as audio/visual equipment mentioned earlier).

My best attempt recommendation would be based on the whether a UI element is text related or not; the examples above (tickets sold progress bar) makes sense to follow the direction of the paragraph, but for a progress bar in a non-textual context (say, a `<div dir="rtl">` with an embedded video player), it might be too counter-intuitive and confusing for the users.

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Received on Tuesday, 25 October 2022 15:52:33 UTC