RE: 2.1 Overview and proposal

Interesting. 

I think the intent is there in the IBM guidelines.  But I think "inherently
mouse" is in the eyes of the mouseholder.     There are many tasks that can
be done from the keyboard and that should be doable from the keyboard,  that
many developers would consider "inherently mouse" activities.   

So I would not advise this approach unless a functional definition of
"inherently mouse" was developed that was not based on examples.

 
Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Charles McCathieNevile
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 6:47 PM
To: Andi Snow-Weaver
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: 2.1 Overview and proposal


This seems like a misleading example.

The first programming I ever did was on drawing applications. Before mice,
when keyboards were considered a fine way to build an interface for drawing.

Mouse keys are great, but at the time more serious options were required
since everybody expected to be able to use the applictions - being able to
turn a pointer for fine direction control, being able to make short or long
steps (because detail work requires short steps but long lines need to be
easier to make), change brush styles and colours, etc.

This is still important for people with mouse-control problems - drawing
with
a mouse is surprisingly hard. It's also the start of making drawing possible
for people with significant visual impairment or total blindness.

And they were projects done by upper primary school (called elementary
school in the US) and high school kids.

(Andi, are the results of this discussion sufficiently connected to function
as feedback on the accessibility guidelines, or should I separately look for
a feedback mechanism for those?)

Cheers

Chaals

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Andi Snow-Weaver wrote:

>>From today's action items....
>
>The following exerpt is from the IBM Software Accessibility Guidelines
>techniques for keyboard equivalents [1].
>
>"The accessibility requirement is for all functions of the software, that
>are not inherently mouse functions, to be operable using only the keyboard.
>Drawing is an example of a function that is inherently a mouse funtion.
>Direct manipulation, such as selecting text, is not inherently a mouse
>function."
>
>[1]  <http://www.ibm.com/able/guidelines/software/swkbdequiv.html>
>

Received on Friday, 9 January 2004 04:22:35 UTC