RE: should we say "critical controls" or just "controls".

From: lisa.seeman [mailto:lisa.seeman@zoho.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2017 2:36 PM

the wording for personilazation (issue 6) that we seem to be moving towards is:

 For pages that contains interactive controls or with more then one regions, one of the following is true:

  *    a mechanism is available for personalization of content that enables the user to add symbols to interactive controls OR
  *     contextual information for regions and  [critical ] controls is programmatically determined.

where critical controls  could be defined something like:  controls that are essential for the task that a user may have come to the page for
(see issue 6 for other definitions)

So for example, on a page to compose an email, the send button would be critical, but undo button or format buttons would not be critical.
[Jason] If my task is to write an e-mail message containing a table of upcoming meeting dates and topics for my completely hypothetical Web accessibility study group, then the format button becomes critical under this task description. (I assume for the sake of discussion that the Format button is needed to create a table.) If my objective is simply to write a correct e-mail message and I make a mistake by deleting the wrong paragraph while composing it, then arguably the Undo button becomes critical according to the above definition – it’s needed for the task of writing a correct message under very foreseeable circumstances of error making.

I think the concept of “criticality” is very problematic.

Some further difficulties with the proposal:

  *   What’s the criterion for a page’s containing “more than one region”?
  *   “symbols” should be defined, as the term has a very specific meaning here. In addition, there’s no express restriction on what the mechanism must enable the symbols to represent or convey (e.g., whether the mechanism have to identify the control’s purpose, its role, its states, or only some of these). It isn’t clear what mechanisms would qualify here.
  *   I don’t think it’s the user who would add the symbols; it’s the user agent or assistive technology.
  *   It seems to me that “for personalization of content” is redundant in specifying the requirement – it probably should be omitted.
  *   We need to review the definition of “contextual information” while discussing this proposal, as it’s essential to the second alternative.
  *   It isn’t clear what kinds of region are being referred to in this proposal, or how their bounds should be established.
  *

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