RE: Discussion - Add Orientation SC to Editor's Draft

> At it's simplest form this SC is saying respect the user's preference regarding display orientation - regardless of how they arrive there.

It doesn’t actually say that though.  A translation of this would be to let the user pick their preferred orientation, but instead the criterion is saying the normal method of not locking it and assumes the method for arriving at the user’s preference.

> This SC is simply instructing authors not to force portrait or landscape mode on users.  If a user decides to lock their orientation via device hardware, OS setting, or even a setting provided by the app itself - that's fine.  That's the user's choice.

The way I’d interpret this is that you’re saying (a) there needs to be an unlocked version of the content, and (b) locking can be done from within the content but the default should be unlocked.  Is that correct?  That goes past the user requirement to me and could even create inaccessibility.  And, ironically, would not require accessibility in some cases.

Consider the example of a game that either may be played with the screen flat or the user may be moving the device rapidly.  Any use of a gyroscope here to allow auto-rotation of unlocked content would result in a terrible user experience and possibly inaccessibility for users with cognitive disabilities who now need to find a method to lock it.  But there’s no reason the game couldn’t be played in either orientation (i.e. it’s not essential), so the author supplies a toggle to swap it to the user’s choice for good accessibility and may even go the extra mile to query the device’s gyroscope when loaded to make sure it’s displayed properly at the start, but it’s always locked.  Where’s the user problem there?  If I take the SC on its face though, the author needs to pass via the essential exception, which also gives them an unnecessary pass for allowing it to be played in either orientation.

At the risk of triple redundancy, I tried to address all this in the version I proposed.

“A mechanism is available to view content in all display orientations without loss of essential content or functionality, except where the display orientation is fixed by the user agent or is essential for usage or meaning.”

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2017AprJun/1094.html


In fact, I think I’m convincing myself that there’s only extremely rare cases where it would be essential to not allow any viewing orientation, such as for a compass app.

Steve

From: Marc Johlic [mailto:marc.johlic@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2017 10:14 AM
To: Joshue O Connor <josh@interaccess.ie>
Cc: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>; White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org>
Subject: Re: Discussion - Add Orientation SC to Editor's Draft

I'm certainly willing to yield to consensus, but I also like to keep all of our SCs as simple and readable as possible.  I'm struggling to see how "or by user request" adds value to this SC.

We don't have that on other SCs - for example Contrast Minimum.  We had some discussions on a recent AGWG call regarding users that desire / require contrast levels that don't meet the 4.5:1 (or even 3:1) requirements.  They may use their own stylesheets to achieve their desired text / background colors, but 1.4.5 does not specifically call out "not overriding" that user preference.  It's a given.

I think it would be the same situation here.  This SC is simply instructing authors not to force portrait or landscape mode on users.  If a user decides to lock their orientation via device hardware, OS setting, or even a setting provided by the app itself - that's fine.  That's the user's choice.  The original SC text would apply:  "don't force portrait or landscape on the user".

At it's simplest form this SC is saying respect the user's preference regarding display orientation - regardless of how they arrive there.

-marc


On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:39 AM, Joshue O Connor <josh@interaccess.ie<mailto:josh@interaccess.ie>> wrote:
Hi all,

Moving this out of the CFC - to a separate thread for further discussion.

Thanks for that Steve.  We can of course iterate this SC.

I like the second amendment with the edit:

“Content is not locked to a specific display orientation, and functionality of the content is operable in all display orientations, except where a specific display orientation is essential for use of the content or by user request.”

Thanks
--
Joshue O Connor
Director | InterAccess.ie