Re: CFC - Target Size AA and AAA, and comment responses

On 28/11/2017 20:01, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> Call For Consensus — ends Thursday November 30th at 2:45pm Boston time.
> 
> The Working Group has discussed changes to Target Size (AA) and Target 
> Size (Enhanced) (AAA), as well as approving comment responses for these SC.
> 
> The specific changes are detailed in this pull 
> request: https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/pull/592
> 
> Call minutes: https://www.w3.org/2017/11/28-ag-minutes.html#item05, 
> https://www.w3.org/2017/11/28-ag-minutes.html - item06 
> <https://www.w3.org/2017/11/28-ag-minutes.html#item06>, 
> https://www.w3.org/2017/11/28-ag-minutes.html#item07
> 
> If you have concerns about this proposed consensus position that have 
> not been discussed already and feel that those concerns result in you 
> “not being able to live with” this decision, please let the group know 
> before the CfC deadline.

Still of the belief that, though better than before, this SC at AA is 
problematic.

Circling back to the discussions in the call, per the minutes, it's 
noted that 44x44 / 48x48 are industry standards. That is true, but I'd 
add that these are standards (which are worded more as recommendations - 
for instance, Apple's HIG state "Try to maintain a minimum tappable area 
of 44pt x 44pt for all controls", emphasis on "Try to") that are mainly 
aimed at native applications on touch devices. Native applications do 
not provide pinch-zoom, whereas web content does. Even in desktop 
browsers, with a mouse, users that have trouble confidently activating a 
link/control can full-page-zoom and make the targets bigger. In both 
cases, web content users have built-in mechanisms to enlarge small 
targets. While designing targets to be "large enough" in the first place 
is a great usability advice, I'm still not seeing specifically why it 
needs to be a hard pass/fail criterion. Further, noting that even Apple, 
Google, etc themselves break their own guidelines/suggestions when they 
deem it necessary/applicable.

Does the SC, as worded now, allow for an interface/site to provide 
different interfaces, one of which has the required target sizes? If a 
site implemented, say, media queries that check for the presence of 
coarse and fine pointers, and only showed smaller targets if no coarse 
pointer (e.g. touchscreen) was detected, would it pass or fail? If a 
site offered an explicit setting or switch to go into a "touch-friendly" 
layout, would that be sufficient?

"The size of the target is determined by the user agent and is not 
modified by the author."

The simple act of defining a base font size for html/body would 
constitute a modification by the author, no? While yes, the 
understanding document can clarify when/how/what "modified by the 
author" means, I'm worried that the normative SC text is fairly wooly 
and unclear here and quite open to very wide, as well as very narrow, 
interpretation.

"A particular presentation of the target is <a>essential</a> to the 
information being conveyed"

What scenarios are there? A pixel-hunting game (where only a tiny area 
in a large image is clickable)? Other?

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Tuesday, 28 November 2017 20:39:59 UTC