Guideline 1.3 and user interface changes

This is an action item from today's meeting.

It has been proposed under guideline 1.3 that changes to the user
interface (including state/value information) can be programmatically
determined.

Gregg offered the following scenario:

A user interface control, when activated, causes some of the content
to be replaced by a translation into another natural language. He then
suggested that the proposed requirement would demand translation
capabilities from the user agent, contrary to the intent of the
success criterion. I shall argue that this is not so, and that the
above scenario does not constitute an objection to the proposal.

There are three cases:

1. The user interface control can be activated programmatically. In
   this case, the change can be made programmatically, namely by
   programmatically activating the u i control. The proposed success
   criterion is satisfied.

2. The u i control cannot be activated programmatically, but somehow
   the user agent is still able to translate the text (a very
   far-fetched possibility). In this case also the requirement is
   satisfied, which is the desired result.

Case 3: The u i control can't be activated programmatically and the
user agent can't perform the translation. The success criterion isn't
met.

These three cases are exhaustive and demonstrate that the above
scenario does not create any problems for the proposed 1.3 criterion.

Received on Thursday, 28 April 2005 23:37:07 UTC