Issue 59: not for WCAG 2.1?

Issue 59 (https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/59) has been proposed to be deferred for another time. As I see it, there are two ways that this can happen:


  1.  No one does anything further with it, and it sits until we eventually say “I guess it is too late now…”
  2.  We explicitly determine that it doesn’t fit into the WCAG 2.x model or for some other reason decide to defer it (defer might be to 2.1, silver, or tbd).

My understanding is that this issue, which essentially requires that functionality can be operated with pointer inputs, is affecting all users and is not differentially having an adverse affect on users with disabilities.

I think that unless we can crisply define how to target an SC in a manner that specifically addresses issues that affect people with disabilities rather than “all touchscreen users” then we should defer it. Perhaps in Silver we will have an SC that speaks directly to multi-modal input for functionality and this will be addressed that way – after all, we will have an increasing number of interfaces (keyboard, voice, pointer, virtual gestures, etc) so perhaps if we aren’t starting from “make sure you have keyboard access” it will be more approachable.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Standards and Accessibility
Adobe

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