Re: Reflow techniques

Hi Wayne,

In the longer sections of that Macbeth piece I think it affects reading once wrapped. It doesn’t indicate the new lines (that I can see), so it’s hard to understand which line runs into which.

I’m not going to make a big argument about that, I’m sure there are various cases with varying degrees of difficulty.

The main point is the difference between a failure and success technique:

- A failure has to be a failure in every applicable circumstance. I.e. If it targets pre or non-wrappable text, then any example where non-wrapping text is ‘essential’ undermines it and that failure technique would have to be removed.

- A sufficient technique provides an example for people to follow, and can be used to indicate that this this is possibly therefore it cannot be under the ‘essential’ exception. But it doesn’t have to be absolute, a case of non-wrapping text doesn’t undermine it.

If someone writes either or both then we’ll put it to the group and argue it out. It is just that if I were sitting down to write it, I’d rather do the success technique because it is more likely to work.
Cheers,

-Alastair

Apologies for typos, sent from a mobile.

________________________________
From: Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 4:04 am
To: Alastair Campbell
Cc: LVTF - low-vision-a11y
Subject: Re: Reflow techniques

Dear Alastair,
Preformatted text is always a problem. Well if the width of the text never uses more than 1/4 of the screen, it is OK. Otherwise, you scroll in the direction of text.

The question is: When is preformatted text necessary.
It must be required to support the usage or meaning.
What content would meet this requirement?
I reference Macbeth. It is a long piece in iambic pentameter.  http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html.

One might think it would require pre-text, but  MIT managed a nicely functional page that wraps intelligently.

Programming code does not require preformatted text as witnessed by the Stylus editor or Webstorm.

If we want positive guidance we need some realistic examples of necessary pre-text. I am at a loss. I have really thought about this.

Best, Wayne




On Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 3:46 PM Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com<mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com>> wrote:
Hi everyone,

Triggered by a conversation on the AG list, I did a little tidy-up of the techniques listed in reflow:
https://cdn.staticaly.com/gh/w3c/wcag/reflow-technique-list/understanding/21/reflow.html?x=3#techniques

The changes are:

  *   Transforming the pre failure technique into a positive sufficient one.

  *   Removing the 'reflowing simple data tables', there is disagreement that is possible without creating other accessibility issues.

  *   Modifying the wording of the mechanism to 'switch to mobile' technique.
The conversation was about the failure of pre based text, which was difficult as there are (I think) some uses of pre which are 'essential'.

However, a sufficient technique changes the conversation to 'Well, how is that usage essential if you can use this technique to let it reflow?'

Please let me know if I've missed or misunderstood something.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

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www.nomensa.com<http://www.nomensa.com><http://www.nomensa.com/> / @alastc