Comments on the discussion about target size and accidental activation (was Re: Minutes: AGWG meeting April 4, 2017)

On 04/04/2017 17:35, James Nurthen wrote:
> Please find minutes at
>
>
>
> http://www.w3.org/2017/04/04-ag-minutes.html
>

# On the target size SC discussion:

 > JF: havea requirement that links need to be keyboard accessible - is 
that an alternative method

this basically assumes that all touchscreen users also have a keyboard 
with them? or rather, that it's ok for designers to make their targets 
too small for unambiguous use because users that have a problem should 
be using a keyboard instead?

 > DMD: this came out of the mobile TF. Trying to fix that people on 
small screens - that was the primary reason as i understand it

Incorrect. We are trying to fix the problem of people that have mobility 
challenges (shaky hands, for instance) in accurately targetting 
links/controls (using their finger on a touchscreen, using a mouse, etc).

 > DMD: what we are now proposing is to adopt the apple mobile SC and 
port those to desktop environments

Incorrect. We are trying to port the apple/google/microsoft proposed 
minimum target sizes to all touchscreen environments (regardless of 
"mobile", "tablet", "phablet", "touch-enabled laptop", "desktop with 
large touchscreen"), and to expand this (with a smaller size 
requirement) to also cover traditional mouse/trackpad users who have 
similar problems in accurately hitting activation targets.

 >  this is a perfect example( footnotes) where little tiny lines would 
have to be much
 > bigger. Most sites would fail this right now. We would be talking 
abotu a major
 > rewite of the entire web. Would be lots of buy-in for small screens 
but lots of
 > orgs wont want this on desktop environments

Orgs that want to comply to 2.1 should be prepared to put in extra work 
to make sure they pass new SCs. If the argument is mainly "it's too much 
work for too little gain" then I'd rather see this SC moved to AAA but 
kept intact.

 > <David-MacDonald> The compromise would be to use mobile break points. 
Small screens have large target requirements.

Small viewport is not an indicator of "user has a touchscreen". It's a 
naive fallacy, and one that I will absolutely oppose being enshrined in 
any official guideline. If I'm a touch user, I'll have the same problems 
activating targets that are too small whether I'm on a small screen, or 
a large screen, or on the same large screen with my browser resized to 
be smaller than full-screen.

https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/60#issuecomment-291565917



# On the accidental activation SC

 > AWK: would this cover a mouse?

yes

 > greg: I don't think the wording does that
 > ... way i read the current wording - if I use the standard click 
event i would not
 > comply as I have not satisifed that

You would ibe, since that would satisfy the "platform's generic 
activation/click event" part of the first bullet?

 > if the generic platform one isn't on up event and haven't done it on 
up event then need to do one of the other techniques
[...]
 > greg: can't be sure we are running on a browser where activation is 
on up.
 >
 > you cannot be sure there is not a browser where you can't do it on 
the down event

the requirement here is not "activate on the up event", it's "no 
accidental activation". If you're sticking to using click event, and the 
browser for whatever reason fires it on the down, rather than the up 
(which, to my knowledge, is not the case in current browsers), then 
you're still satisfying the first bullet, and sticking to the browser 
conventions. it's then a problem of the UA, not of the author's code, if 
the *browser* somehow didn't implement mechanisms that prevents users 
from accidentally activating things (all browsers to my knowledge do 
this today).

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2017 17:14:54 UTC