Follow up from the meeting on Issue 14: timeouts

We had vigorous discussion on the Timeouts SC proposal on the last call.

The bottom line as I was hearing it on the call is that people recognize that there is value in the idea that users should have advance notice of time limits that the content imposes on the users. The challenge is in how we make this happen.

There was also a question raised by Jason about how this fits with 2.2.1 and that it might be confusing because it is separate. This is potentially true, but also a decision that we decided to defer until we see more of the SC that we accept and can decide whether to only add SC or if we can modify existing SC. This one might fit within a modified SC 2.2.1 but at least for now it is separate.

It seems that there are a few options being discussed:

  1.  advance notice, with an exception for sites that retain user-entered data for a day.
  2.  Advance notice, pure and simple.
  3.  Break apart into 3 SC – one to provide advance notice of any time limit, one to save data for a day, and one to address inactivity time limits

Here are a few options:
Relates to option 1:
"For each time limit set by the content where user-entered data can be lost, the user is advised about the time limit at the start of the process unless any user-entered data is preserved for at least 24 hours after the limit is reached.”

Relates to option 2 (suggested by mike gower and Steve Repser, edited into the same form as above):
"For each time limit set by the content where user-entered data can be lost, the user is advised about the time limit at the start of the process."

Relates to option 3 – it would seem that the shorter version proposed by mike/steve would address the first SC, but I’m not sure what the “24 hour data retention” SC would look like, nor how the “inactivity time limit” SC would differ from the mike/steve version.

What do people think? Option 1, 2, 3, or something else?

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk