Re: form orientation, navigation, and submission techniques

Hi, Gregory

Perhaps that's an problem.  The assumption you're making is that there
is no problem because the clients will be incorporating the user
agent guidelines.  First, where does that leave blind people these
days and in the near future?  Second, how many developers of user
agent technology are going to incoporate the standards?  For example,
what was the participation of Netscape/Mozilla in the process of
developing the standards?  I wonder how much Microsoft is willing
to actually implement in IE.

The guidelines should be inline with current technology.  If the technology
changes, the guidelines should also change.  However, setting up the
guidelines to work with technology which doesn't exist is creating
another technology gap into which disabled people will fall.


The technology I've developed is not transforming an existing web page
into another type of web page.  As I've said before, there is a technological
limit on transforming on the basis of semantic content.  The technology
I've developed allows for creating highly flexible, adaptable web pages which
are tailored to each user's needs.  This is the direction that sites
which are B2C or B2B are heading rather than forcing all users to use
the same web page.

Scott

PS  An interesting result I got from my experiment was that a couple of people
who sue and like JFW 3.5 still preferred using the web pages formatted for
blind users.  The organization of the web page designed for blind users
was easier to work with.


> aloha, scott!
> 
> while i am in the midst of composing a more complex post about the 
> interdependence of the three WAI guidelines documents in assuring users 
> efficient means of orientation when inside a FORM and when navigating 
> FORMS, i did want to point out that several of the problem statements and 
> proposed solutions you posted to the list yesterday, on the topic of blind 
> users' interaction with forms, have been addressed as part of the 
> techniques on forms contained in the Techniques for the User Agent 
> Accessibility Guidelines
> 
> in particular, refer to the Form Techniques section, which is located at:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-UAAG10-TECHS/#form-techniques
> and which is divided into the following sub-sections
> 
> 1. Form navigation techniques
> 2. Form orientation techniques
> 3. Form control orientation techniques
> 4. Form submission techniques
> 
> as well as in the following excerpts from techniques for specific UAAG 
> checkpoints
> 
> Techniques for Checkpoint 7.5
> + For forms, allow users to find controls that must be changed
>     by the user before submitting the form. Allow users to search
>     on labels as well as content of some controls.
> 
> Techniques for Checkpoint 8.6
> + Provide a structured view of form controls (e.g., those
>    grouped by LEGEND or OPTGROUP in HTML) along with their
>    labels.
> 
> Techniques for Checkpoint 9.2
> + Allow the user to configure script-based submission (e.g.,
>     triggered by an "onChange" event). For instance, allow these
>     settings:
>         1. Do not allow script-based submission.
>         2. Allow script-based submission after confirmation from
>              the user.
>         3. Allow script-based submission without confirmation from
>              the user.
> + Users who navigate a document serially may think that the
>     submit button in a form is the "last" control they need to
>     complete before submitting the form. Therefore, for forms in
>     which additional controls follow a submit button, if those
>     controls have not been completed, inform the user and ask for
>     confirmation (or completion) before submission.
> 
> Techniques for Checkpoint 10.3
> + Provide information about which keys activate form controls.
> 
> -- end list of selected UAAG Techniques
> 
> of course, these are in-the-future solutions, but many of them are readily 
> implementable...  how implementable, i suppose, will be put to the test -- 
> first during the Proposed Recommendation (a.k.a. member-review) period for 
> the User Agent Guidelines, which ends on 7 april 2000, and then in the 
> ensuing months, when new releases of, and/or updates for, user agents begin 
> to appear...
> 
> by the way, have you given any thought of making your transformation 
> utilities/applications/applets available as proxy servers?  you have some 
> very effective methods of exposing content to anyone experiencing the web 
> in a linear fashion, which could be more widely tested by running a proxy 
> server which would redeliver transformed pages to users...   that, i 
> personally, believe, is a very sound interim strategy, and one that will 
> benefit a lot of people not only in the short term, but for some time to 
> come -- especially those who don't have access to the latest in adaptive 
> technology, the latest releases of script-capable browsers, those working 
> in script-incapable environments, and anyone who really hates all of the 
> advertising and attention-grabbing gimmicks on the web!
> 
> for the long term, i'm still firmly in favor of client-side solutions, but, 
> then again, i'm getting awfully tired of experiencing the web mostly by 
> listening to and tweaking and then reloading document source...  on the 
> other hand, i am quite impressed by how clearly JFW 3.5 can expose visually 
> oriented/rendered content and how it has greatly enhanced the navigational 
> and orientation capacities available to me, but then, i am fortunate enough 
> to own a copy of JFW 3.5 and a computer (with enough processing power and 
> RAM) upon which to run it and several different browsers...
> 
> gregory

Received on Friday, 17 March 2000 14:43:12 UTC