Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Vibration API (Issue #971)

Hi @anssiko, thanks for being so proactive about engagement here.

The TAG looked at this in breakout and we have a few concerns:

We're concerned about the abuse of this API to divert attention in inappropriate situations.  We note that you're specifying sticky activation.  Are there use cases that support this - rather than transient activation?
  
For the difference in activation types, we think that sticky activation might not be a good justification for the notification-style use case.  If someone isn't engaging with the site, having it vibrate could be annoying.  If the goal is to generate a notification, the notification API seems like a much better fit for that.  At least with notifications, people are in control of how they are notified (sound, visual, vibration, or combinations).
  
There is a good analogy between this and audio, in that both might be engaged in a similar way and disabled with similar controls. However, have you considered adding a stronger normative requirement that UAs should be able to turn it off? It's not as easy to turn off a vibration with physical controls as it is with sound.
  
Security/privacy considerations don't treat annoyance as a problem.  [Interruptions](https://w3ctag.github.io/privacy-principles/#interruptions) is a privacy issue you should consider addressing.  We like that the vibrations only activate when the page is visible, but that seems like something that should be directly addressed as a mitigation for that issue.  A transient activation requirement might help further.
  
Security considerations should require that accelerometers and gyroscopes are disabled for other origins when vibrating.

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Received on Wednesday, 9 October 2024 07:43:57 UTC