RE: Visual Indicators

Hi John,

Thanks for asking this. I think it is mainly about rephrasing the following:

     *   Use a tool or another mechanism to apply the text spacing metrics (line height, and paragraph, letter, and word spacing), such as the Text Spacing Bookmarklet or a user-style browser plugin.
I cannot shoot from the hip but I might come up with a more elaborated phrasing in a timely fashion.

The point is simply to clarify “who should do what with reasonable effort”. For instance, it is not practical (although doable) if users write Bookmarklets that link labels to form fields if authors have forgotten that. We are also talking about usability here. The current example Bookmarklet for text spacing is for instance not working in iframes included in page, should users really fix that on their own only because they can in principle? Don’t think so.

Also, if there is a common override concept for CSS styles to be used in user agents (a list what css attributes should be overridable to enable customization for WCAG requirements) I also think that WCAG should lay foundation to this, with custom text spacing metrics being an important building block.

Best Regards
Stefan

From: John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2020 6:47 PM
To: Schnabel, Stefan <stefan.schnabel@sap.com>
Cc: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>; Niemann, Gundula <gundula.niemann@sap.com>; David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>; WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Visual Indicators

Stefan writes:

"...Being late to the party, I’d like to see a respective sentence to be added in the requirement to be more precise and avoiding ambiguities in interpretation."

Hi Stefan,

Would you care to offer a draft example of what kind of sentence you'd like to see?

We need to be careful here, as the W3C has neither the remit or power to *force* browsers to do anything (which is one of the reasons why continued work on UAAG has stopped). That said, there *ARE* browser extensions that allow for this functionality today, so I am a bit unclear on what you consider to be ambiguous.

JF

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:55 AM Schnabel, Stefan <stefan.schnabel@sap.com<mailto:stefan.schnabel@sap.com>> wrote:
“We do not expect end users to dig into code to implement this, but it would be something for a user-agent (e.g. plugin) to take up.”

Being late to the party, I’d like to see a respective sentence to be added in the requirement to be more precise and avoiding ambiguities in interpretation.

Also, I raised the point to add this to requirements for user agents as for instance, the WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide<https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/> once did and the Core Accessibility API Mappings 1.2<https://w3c.github.io/core-aam/> continues. The fact that the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)<https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/uaag> evolvement seems to be idle since 2016 does not change this.

Regards
Stefan

From: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com<mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com>>
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2020 4:47 PM
To: Niemann, Gundula <gundula.niemann@sap.com<mailto:gundula.niemann@sap.com>>; David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca<mailto:david100@sympatico.ca>>
Cc: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: Visual Indicators

Hi Gundula,

I think we are agreeing in general, but there are a couple of things to point out for future, and in relation to other SCs.


> it was clearly stated that the WCAG should not be prescriptive

We do try to avoid being prescriptive about design aspects, but we also have minimum contrast requirements. It is not a binary thing, there are exceptions.


> which contradicts to the below suggestion to determine exactly how a link or button should show their nature.

The suggestion was to treat it like text-spacing, where it is not prescriptive about the design. It asks that if the user adapts the design in a specific way, it does not become unusable.

We do not expect end users to dig into code to implement this, but it would be something for a user-agent (e.g. plugin) to take up. For example, there isn’t a plugin to specifically implement text-spacing, but there are several for changing fonts. I have a dyslexic (aimed) one installed in Chrome which changes the font, which impacts the spacing.

Anyway, we are generally agreeing, I just wanted that to be clear.

Kind regards,

-Alastair


--
​John Foliot | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com<http://deque.com/>