RE: CFC - Changes to Target Size for Issue 631

-1 with ambivalence for entirely different reason

As explained on our call, Microsoft approaches this from the perspective of what it takes to prevent users from hitting the unintended targets and not how big something should be to make sure users hit the intended targets. I'm not saying if one is right and the other is wrong. All I'm saying is that "make the targets big" is one of at least two potential solutions to solve similar problem. The SC currently prescribes one solution. Hence my ambivalence.

If you have a reasonably recent version of Office desktop, you can see this in action by setting the spacing between targets to be optimized for mouse or touch. Switching to optimizing for touch keeps the touch targets the same size as before, but the space between them is increased. I don't think our approach is "wrong". But our approach does not meet the SC, at least by the letter...

From: Brooks.Newton@thomsonreuters.com<mailto:Brooks.Newton@thomsonreuters.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 3:14 PM
To: akirkpat@adobe.com<mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com>; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: RE: CFC - Changes to Target Size for Issue 631

-1

I've thought about this more after the call today, and have moved my opinion "from strong reservations" to "cannot live with this."

I think that this new target size minimum definition opens the door for unintended consequences, which could negatively impact the people we are trying to accommodate and protect under the guidelines.  A 44px by 1px target size minimum, would provide web content owners an excuse under our guidelines to render unusable touch targets to critical information they have to display by law, but don't want to display conspicuously. I don't want to ratify Success Criteria that empower content owners to do wrong by the disability community.  I fully understand that the intent of this change in target size minimum is to get content owners to start thinking about providing adequate pointer targets, but unfortunately, I believe the SC as amended will be abused.  Plus, we still don't have any empirical evidence that backs up the claim that this target size minimum will actually make the difference for people with disabilities who want to use a mouse on desktop and/or touch input on mobile devices, instead of being forced to use a keyboard (or equivalent).

Brooks



From: Andrew Kirkpatrick [mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 12:55 PM
To: WCAG
Subject: CFC - Changes to Target Size for Issue 631
Importance: High

Call For Consensus - ends January 12 at 1:45pm Boston time.

The Working Group has discussed a change to the Target Size SC in response to issue 631 (https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/631) and discussion. This was discussed on the call (https://www.w3.org/2018/01/10-ag-minutes.html#item06).

The specific changes are detailed in this pull request: https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/pull/678  (see implemented at http://rawgit.com/w3c/wcag21/Issue631/guidelines/index.html#target-size)

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.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com<mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com>
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