Issue 170 - F52 recommendations

Hi everyone,

In the call I said I’d look into issue 170 more, so I reviewed the github issue [1] & webaim thread [2] etc.

I have two recommendations, one short term (update to F52) and one longer term (collate potential triggers of context changes).

As a relative newbie to this process, I am assuming that:

  1.  SCs are not changeable for the purpose of dealing with gut hub issues.
  2.  A failure must be of an SC as written.
  3.  Techniques, Failures & understanding docs can be massaged.

To start with: there is definitely an issue, the actual title of the failure states:
"F52: Failure of Success Criterion 3.2.1 and 3.2.5 due to opening a new window as soon as a new page is loaded"

If a new window is opened on page load, then it can’t be a failure of 3.2.1 as that applies when a component has received focus. Wrong trigger mechanism.

I think 3.2.5 is still relevant though: "Change on Request: Changes of context are initiated only by user request or a mechanism is available to turn off such changes."
And the understanding 3.2.5 doc explicitly calls out "automatic launching of new windows”.

Key factor: Although the user has initiated a change (e.g. clicked a link), they did not know know they were initiating one or more new windows as well.

If a user knew that a new window would open as well, then that would be ok. Therefore this failure could be for of 3.2.5 only, or for 3.2.5 and 2.4.4 (Link purpose).

I think it could be a failure for both independently. I.e. If you tell the user in the link text then it is not a failure of 2.4.4, but it would still be a fail (at AAA) of 3.2.5.

In practice I can’t see people using link text like “Mountain Bike selection (opens 3 advertising popups)”, so I think most examples of this would be caught at the AA level.

Recommendation 1: Drop 3.2.1 from F52, but add 2.4.4. Add to the procedure to check whether the link that leads to the unexpected pop-ups includes information about them.

From the Webaim thread, we could also add a new failure for 2.2.4 (Interruptions), where there is a delay before the pop-up activates.

Longer term, there are other triggers for pop-ups that are potentially inaccessible. For example, on www.headwater.com<http://www.headwater.com/> if you scroll down, scroll up, and move your mouse near the top of the page a pop-up appears to try and get you to subscribe. (I assume this is their heuristic for: the user might be leaving the page.)
There are other triggers such as mouse-over of a link triggering a pop-over video, or a simple timing delay between on-load and when it appears.

Most would be caught by 2.2.4 (Interruptions) or 3.2.5 (Change on Request), but they are AAA and there might be reason to have a higher level SC in future.

Recommendation 2: Collate some bad examples of triggers not caught by the guidelines (at AA), and ask the TFs to consider the impact of each, and whether there are potential new SCs, techniques or failures.

NB: We also have to be careful not to fall into the “I hate these random modal dialogues we should ban them” frame of mind. Many of them apply to everyone, so they are annoying in a non-discriminatory way!

So two questions, assuming that people generally agree:

  1.  What’s the best way to update/edit/draft a new version of F52?
  2.  Shall I email around a request for examples of bad triggers? Or is there a better method for that?

Kind regards,

-Alastair

1] https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/170

2] http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=7374


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Alastair Campbell

www.nomensa.com
follow us: @we_are_nomensa or me: @alastc