Re: Potential failure technique for WCAG 2.1 SC 2.5.6 - Concurrent Input Mechanisms

On 26/11/2018 16:35, Newton, Brooks (Legal) wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I’ve got a question I’d like to pose to the group about a potential 
> failure technique for the AAA WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion for Concurrent 
> Input Mechanisms.
> 
> Here’s the setup for the question:
> 
> A sighted web page user tabs with a keyboard into the content of the 
> page and brings focus to a menu button widget.  Using a keyboard, the 
> user opens the list of options for the menu button widget by pressing 
> the space bar, then she arrows down in the dropdown list to the 3^rd out 
> of 5 options in the list. That 3^rd option displays a visual focus 
> indicator, as it should.  Next, the user grabs a mouse and hovers her 
> cursor over the 1^st of 5 options in the menu button drop down.
> 
> In order to satisfy SC 2.5.6, must the web page content allow for both 
> the keyboard focused option and the mouse hovered option to display 
> visual focus indicators simultaneously?
> 
> Is being able to see where keyboard input focus was last positioned on 
> the page a requirement for being able to use a keyboard at any time, 
> even if the user has hovered over the page with a mouse since the last 
> keyboard maneuver?

My gut answer would be: no, I'd say that once mouse movement is 
detected, a site may even decide to hide the keyboard focus here so as 
not to interfere somehow visually with the mouse hover. As long as once 
the user goes back to the keyboard and moves the focus again the newly 
focused item is highlighted/visibly focused, that would be fine to me. 
And, as Alastair noted, the SC itself isn't concerned with visible focus 
indication, only the more general concept that use of an input isn't 
prevented somehow (i.e. that the site doesn't make simplistic 
assumptions, a la "well the user started with the keyboard, so I don't 
need to bother putting in mouse/touch listeners as they'll just use the 
keyboard exclusively).

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Monday, 26 November 2018 21:06:05 UTC