Transient states

Hi everyone,

There was an item last week on defining ‘transient states’ with regards to this:
https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/157


The whole point may be moot now as Makoto Ueki pointed out that the group responded on this here:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2014Feb/0039.html


So historically focus/hover/activate states are not covered by colour contrast in SC 1.4.3. That surprised a few people.

In case this gets re-visited I tried to find a way of differentiating transient states (such as hover) from really transient states (such as active).

In W3C terms these are generally referenced as 'Dynamic pseudo-classes’ and within those, 'user action pseudo-classes', but they are not defined by their timing element, and there is no differentiation from the CSS/HTML spec (that I can find). Both CSS and WCAG should apply across platforms, so definitions are difficult.

The closest thing is 'formal activation state’ in the WhatWG doc here:
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/scripting.html#in-a-formal-activation-state

"An element is said to be in a formal activation state between the time the user begins to indicate an intent to trigger the element's activation behaviour"

So there is a potential avenue, but as I noted above, the point may be moot if none of them are covered.

Cheers,

-Alastair