Re: Do we want a Biometric Alternative SC in WCAG 2.1?

On 22/07/2016 05:00, Gregg Vanderheiden RTF wrote:
> ?????
>
> this is about how to make a web page accessible.
>
> I’m not sure how a web author has any idea what hardware is at the other
> end ofter than a screen, keyboard, and pointing device (which are pretty
> much standard).   And for these s/he can only design to the keyboard,
> screen and pointer interface since they don’t have any ideas of the size
> or form of the physical devices (though the screen size or at least
> pixels might be known.

There are many advanced APIs (both standardised and vendor-specific on 
particular platforms) that allow authors to hook into advanced sensors 
(for instance, camera) and high-level services (such as biometric 
authentication systems like TouchID, though this is currently only 
possible from native apps...but potentially, this could be exposed in 
future to the web platform as well, meaning a web app could provide a 
TouchID field for users to authenticate with their fingerprint - the OS 
itself would handle the actual authentication, and send a 
"valid"/"invalid" message back to the webpage requesting authentication).

I could, in principle, see an argument for authors being required to 
provide alternatives. But this does feel like it could be a good example 
of a broader thought I have for an SC to cover "advanced sensors" in the 
mobile TF work, which (once I've drafted it) will say something along 
the lines of "as you can't rely on the presence of these sorts of 
advanced sensors (tilt sensor, light sensor, [and here we could add 
fingerprint sensor used for biometric authentication]), ensure that 
alternative accessible mechanisms are available for users to trigger 
functionality/control the web page". This is clearly still in need of 
lots of wordsmithing, but wondering if the general gist of this would 
adequately cover Katie's concern on biometrics (if adequately explained 
in the Understanding related to the SC)?

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Friday, 22 July 2016 08:43:35 UTC