PRI - 12 Accessibility in Applets

ISSUE - 12:
An AC Member thought that there was a topic missing in the guidelines. They
felt that for applets it would also be nice to see a statement something
like:

"Only use technology that provides an Accessibility API to build applets
from. This way assistive technologies are able to access the information
contained in them."

They felt that this way accessibility sensitized designers would have some
guidance on what to look for in the technology the applet is to be based on
and a user won't be forced to use some alternative to the applet when
running in a browser that is able to display an applet.

They noted that this did place a requirement on the user to have an
assistive technology that is compatible with the Accessibility API but that
that was something beyond the scope of these guidelines.


PROPOSED RESOLUTION:
This is covered in Guideline 8 which states

8.1	Make programmatic elements such as scripts and applets directly
accessible or compatible with assistive technologies [Priority 1 if
functionality is important and not presented elsewhere, otherwise Priority
2.]

Using an Accessibility API can be discussed in the Techniques document as a
strategy for doing this.


SPECIFIC WORDING:   No Change proposed to Guidelines doc itself.

Received on Monday, 26 April 1999 12:16:50 UTC