Re: Telco result, resolution

Hi Detlev,

You wrote:
> The mobile a11y TF had originally intended to mandate single point activation for *all* path-based gestures (including dragging) - this was couched in the term "complex gestures" at the time.

I wonder if this is a source of confusion, for me a “single pointer activation” just means you use a single pointer (e.g. mouse, finger). A swipe could be achieved with a “single pointer”.

Is ‘single pointer activation’ intended to mean a click/tap? I.e. with no detected movement between points. In which case the definition doesn’t help as it includes “and path-based gestures”.

> I realised only recently that defining path-based gestures as being 'directional' might allow an interpretation where nearly *all* path-based gestures (see Alastair's recent video examples) could be seen as out of scope of 2.5.1.

My experimentation has changed my view a bit. It is hard to differentiate some of these interactions and directionality is not the best way. But we do need to pin it down.


> Our evolving understanding, in my view, justifies going back to WG resolution like https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/478#issuecomment-348069753 which seemed reasonable a the time.

The difference in that resolution vs the current SC text is “a single-point activation” vs “a single pointer without a path-based gesture”.

I must be missing something, I don’t see much difference there? I assume the “without” bit was added to nullify the part of the single pointer definition that includes paths.

I still think our best bet is to scope it through “path-based gestures”, with something like:

A path-based gesture is an interaction where the user:

  *   Engages a pointer with a defined starting point in the content (down event),
  *   carries out a directional movement or movements before disengaging the pointer (up event),
  *   where the end point is separate from the starting point and not a pre-defined area.

(Hoping someone can improve the last bit.)

-Alastair