Re: Interactive use of the WWW

Tricky problem.

The best way to have them avoided is not to use them. If you do, provide
an accessible alternative. (The reason for putting them in links is that
Internet Explorer only deals with them in links. The HTML 4
recommendation, which provides the triggers most authors are using, makes
no such stricture, and it is perfectly possible to put a trigger directly
onto an element as per the specification. It just means that MSIE falls
into the large net of browsers which don't handle scripts properly (I
think actually every browser is in that category at the moment).

Charles McCathieNevile

On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, jaap van lelieveld wrote:

  Dear readers,
  Unfortunately I will nog be able to join the coming GL meeting.
  I think the current documents cover the needs of regular HTML
  readers.
  
  One item though, that is mentioned several times, is not really
  solved properly. This concerns interactive aspect of WWW usage.
  More and more sites use JavaScripting for this.
  I'd be happy if some guidelines could be added to regulate
  scripting. 
  
  Problems:
  - Instability of the screen becuse of moving objects (already mentioned
    but from a different view point).
  - In many cases Javascript-based links behave different than 
    HTML links. How can this be avoided.
  - Links sometimes have strange names: the names of the scripting
    routines they belong to. How can this be avoided.
  - Because of scripting requirements links show up in the tab
    order that are no real links. They are only needed for
    technical reasons. How can these "hidden links" be
    avoided or how can they be recognized by the screen
    reader (and rejected as irrelevant) or by the user?
  
  I do hope you see my point.
  Since more and more sites require interaction this
  problem is becoming more and more important.
  
  Best regards,
  Jaap
  
  Message from: Jaap van Lelieveld      The Netherlands
                Chairman of EBU commission on Technical Devices and Services
  E-mail:       Jaap.van.Lelieveld@inter.nl.net
  
  USING: YARN V0.92 as an offline reader, and
         UQWK / OLMENU under UNIX for mail and news transfer
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Monday, 15 March 1999 16:48:08 UTC