Re: Rough draft of some success criteria for a extension guideline "Touch accessible"

On 27/07/2015 21:11, ALAN SMITH wrote:
> Keyboard interface is specifically
> required for visually impaired users at all ranges of lose and important
> as many other AT intersfaces emulate the keyboard signals.

Many, but not all. For instance - from my testing, anyway - when using 
AT coupled with a touchscreen (using swipe gestures, as well as 
touch-to-explore etc) VoiceOver/iOS, Talkback/Android, Narrator/Windows, 
Narrator/Windows Mobile, JAWS/Windows , NVDA/Windows do not fire any 
keyboard events (keydown, keypress, keyup) at all. Instead, they do fire 
input-agnostic focus/blur/click (and, in most cases, "faked" mouse 
events, for compatibility reasons with existing content).

For this reason, I'd think using more device-agnostic language (such as 
non-pointer input) in WCAG 2 core would provide a better foundation upon 
which to THEN build mobile/touchscreen/etc specific advice, particularly 
as the principles behind 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3 (if only slightly tweaked 
for input-agnosticism) are valid in all situations/types of inputs (so 
much so that Detlev's proposed 2.5.1 and 2.5.4 can pretty much be read 
as a - reformulated for touch - version of 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3)


> Touch is
> definately new on the user interface scene and small touch sizes are
> everywhere. They need a specific guideline. Try using touch on a 8 inch
> windows tablet along the bottom Taskbar in desktop application. I can
> access them but not touch with my finger. Even on my 10 inch windows
> tablet I've upped the text size to 150 percent and those are a little
> easier to touch but still I make mistakes.  Mouse or cursor pad is
> needed. On my Galaxy Note 4 I use the stylus all the time on Web
> browsers and native apps for check boxes and radio buttons since their
> sizes are too tiny to get focus most of the time with finger touch.

Sure, touch makes small touch targets/clearances more problematic, but 
the same sorts of issues also affect (perhaps with different exact 
size/clearance measurements) mouse/stylus users with impaired fine motor 
control. So I don't quite agree that there's anything exceptional to 
touch that doesn't apply to all pointer inputs.

To make an extreme example, it's possible to make an interface that 
nominally "works" for mouse/stylus users and does not contravene any 
WCAG SCs, but actually has 1x1 pixel buttons or similar. So, advice on 
pointer target size and clearance should, in my view, not be purely 
limited to just touch, if we're trying to improve WCAG overall (rather 
than just making something that's only worded as being applicable to 
touch, and hoping that somebody else will make similar extensions for 
non mobile/non touch cases too).

-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
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Received on Monday, 27 July 2015 20:56:06 UTC