Re: What is "mobile" (was Re: Fwd: Screen Reader Audio on Mobile)

Apologies for once again dredging this up (and for what no doubt will be 
another stream of consciousness on my part), but I still believe that in 
light of the increasingly blurred line between device categories 
(touch-enabled laptops, small-screen non-touch computers, and more 
recently concepts like Microsoft's "Continuum" which allows phones to 
act as full-fledged PCs by connecting a large display, keyboard, mouse) 
having an document written for "Mobile" is not very future proof.

Instead, I'd be more inclined to split out specific inputs/outputs into 
discrete extensions instead - e.g. making SCs specific to touchscreen 
input, separate SCs specific to small screen form factors, etc.

In some cases (just skimming over 
http://kwahlbin.github.io/Mobile-A11y-Extension/) it may not even be 
necessary to have new SCs, but to simply add more informative examples 
to the existing WCAG 2 Understanding and Techniques - looking for 
instance at the rough ideas for 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation, these to me 
feel more suited to the generic WCAG 2 Understanding as examples, rather 
than warranting wholly new SCs that are "mobile" specific.

To address the "but developers who are working on mobile will be looking 
for a document that mentions 'mobile'" counter-argument, I'd then rather 
see an informative or normative new document being created which 
directly points to the relevant parts of WCAG 2 core, 
touchscreen-specific extension, small-screen extension, etc, as well as 
the new examples in Understanding - to basically act as a topic-focused 
index pointing to the more appropriately organised SCs and additional 
materials. Effectively, an extended version of something like 
http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-accessibility-mapping/

Otherwise, I see a risk that by the time the "Mobile" extension for WCAG 
2.0 is published, we'll already have such a diverse and fragmented 
landscape of different types of devices (not necessarily "mobile" in the 
traditional "smartphone with a touchscreen" sense) that developers will 
once again be left cherry-picking and interpreting different WCAG 2.0 
(and extension) documents in order to find SCs that apply to their 
specific case (as mentioned, we already have laptops with 
touchscreens...so, as developer, do I need to worry about core WCAG 2.0 
and then "just" the touchscreen-specific parts of "Mobile" extension?)

P

On 26/10/2015 05:00, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:
>>> That said, I don't see why the technique buckets that the Mobile Note
>>> (and Understanding WCAG) points to couldn't be named along the lines
>>> you suggest "Touchscreen extension" etc.
>>
>> The techniques/undestanding, but not the actual guidelines? Hmm, as
>> long as that's clear enough to devs...but as said, probably too late
>> to backtrack on that (which is why I think, going back to my first
>> point, that it's important to stress in the initial scene-setting for
>> the document the way that "mobile" is used as an umbrella term).
>
>
> if we have made a mistake in naming the document or effort - we should
> not perpetuate the error.   It only makes it worse and confuses the
> issue and the readers.
>
> Also - the name needs to reflect what is meant.  or else it is more
> confusion.
>
> I don’t think the fact that a word is used a lot - is a good reason to
> use it where it does not belong.   Just a good reason for it to be in a
> dictionary.
>
> No?
>
> /gregg/


-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 17 December 2015 21:39:53 UTC