- From: Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs@igalia.com>
- Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 12:52:55 -0400
- To: W3C WAI Protocols & Formats <public-pfwg@w3.org>
Hey all. Today is another Remove Hacks from Orca Day. :) Today's Featured Hack to Kill is related to posinset and setsize for menus, which was put into place because what at least some users expect does not seem to jive with what I'm seeing in the wild. Two examples, one from Google Docs and one from Firefox, both functionally the same. In Google Docs' Sheets, there is a Help menu with the following on-screen items: 1 "Sheets Help" 2 non-navigable separator 3 "Send feedback to Google" 4 non-navigable separator 5 "Function list" 6 "Keyboard shortcuts" To me, there are four menu items: That's how it looks visually. And non-visually, if I press Alt+Shift+H in the hopes of finding a particular item, I can press Down Arrow four times before it's time to give up if I haven't found it. As for the posinset and setsize values, they are: Sheets Help: posinset 1, setsize 1 Send feedback to Google: posinset 1, setsize 1 Function list: posinset 1, setsize 2 Keyboard shortcuts: posinset 2, setsize 2 I can understand the rationale for these values: There are visual separators grouping things. Though it's not a strong grouping. If a subset of the menu's items were really a distinct group, I'd expect them to be contained in a submenu. However, a screen reader presenting the position of these items would say something like "Sheets Help. 1 of 1" possibly leading the user to conclude that the desired item (Keyboard shortcuts) is not in the Help menu. Similarly, the Firefox File menu is divided into four groups with non-navigable separators, and Firefox exposes posinset and setsize values based on those weak-grouping subdivisions. So I'm thinking this is indeed by design. But is this design really what we (and users) want? Because of this "feature," Orca is ignoring posinset and setsize for menu items. Orca shouldn't do that, and I plan to rip that out. But when I do, I anticipate Orca users will complain because the group to them is the set of menu items in the menu; not the subsets delineated by the non-navigable separators, and the post-hack-removal presentation of menus in Firefox and web apps will be inconsistent with menus from the rest of the platform. Curious as to what you all think. Thanks! --joanie
Received on Friday, 17 April 2015 16:53:32 UTC