RE: Comments on User Agent Guidelines

aloha, alan!

in your supplemental comments on the UAGL, you wrote:

quote
How about something about ensuring that focus indicator is visible AND
conspicuous at all times? The lack of conspicuous focus indicator is a big
barrier for people who are sighted and who rely on keyboard-only access. If
the operating system does not provide it, then the user agent should. (Two
examples of exemplary focus indicators: Opera highlights the hypertext links
in focus. The default keyboard shortcut in Windows 95/98/NT for task
switching is Alt + Tab. This pops a window showing tasks, the one with focus
surrounded by a well-defined blue box.
unquote

one of the things i asked for at the last User Agent Face2Face meeting was an
impact matrix for W3C markup languages, showing user agent manufacturers how
much could be gained by simply implementing all of HTML4, all of CSS2, and so
on, so as to illustrate to UA developers just how many of the features and
functionalities for which we are asking could be satisfied simply by
implementing existing specifications that have already undergone extensive
accessibility reviews...

your concern is something that could easily be rectified by full support for
stylesheets, although i'd like to see UA manufacturers that operate in a
graphical environment develop some sort of Wizard interface that a user (who
knows nothing about CSS) could use to build and tailor a stylesheet that is
appropriate for his or her needs, rather than on a decision made by an
individual or small team of developers and applied in a cookie-cutter
one-size-fits-all manner...

the decision on how best to highlight hyperlink text is best left to the user,
which is why i champion the "add full support for CSS1 and CSS2 and you can
satisfy the lion's share of checkpoints in the UAGL" point-of-view...

gregory
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He that lives on Hope, dies farting
     -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
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Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
   WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
        <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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Received on Friday, 3 December 1999 14:47:07 UTC