Re: New SC relating to notifications of content change (was Re: Some thinking around the orientation discussion)

On 06/05/2016 14:23, White, Jason J wrote:

> What ARIA live regions achieve is to notify the assistive technology
> that the user should be informed of the change, and I think this is
> closer to what is needed.

Indeed.

> However, not all changes merit this
> treatment. For example, a screen reader user could be overwhelmed and
> distracted by rapidly updating content, such as high-volume
> communication in a text-based chat application, especially while
> trying to write or to review a message. I suspect the same is true of
> rapidly updating share market prices, social network messages, sports
> scores and similar examples that have been discussed over the years,
> where the user is trying to interact with other content in the same
> Web application.

True, but note also the relationship to 2.2.2 which would require these 
sorts of updates to be adjustable.

> Thus it seems clear that the challenge lies in defining which changes
> ought to be flagged as significant enough to be conveyed to the user
> via an assistive technology. Requiring them actually to be conveyed
> (rather than designated as important) is asking too much, since this
> can depend on factors beyond the control of the content author, such
> as whether an AT is in use and what it supports. However, the author
> can certainly use ARIA, focus changes and possibly other techniques
> to influence what is drawn to the user's attention.
>
> There are two open questions here: which changes should be identified
> as important enough to be conveyed to the user, and what exactly is
> the content author required to do? One could require, for example,
> that such changes can be programmatically distinguished from other
> changes occurring in the content, so that the assistive technology
> can determine which changes to attend to. This seems closer to what
> is wanted, but it still doesn't clearly delineate the relevant
> category of changes.

- changes to content elsewhere on the page as a direct result of user 
interaction with a particular control/interface (e.g. ticking a checkbox 
in a "filter search results" form, and having results in a different 
part of the page dynamically update as a result); basically, a 
confirmation that the action the user just performed had some sort of effect

- fundamental changes to the structure, order of content or 
functionality of a page (which would disorient a non-sighted user who 
may have built up a mental model of the page's structure). admittedly, 
this is vague.

P
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Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Friday, 6 May 2016 15:28:59 UTC