RE: Focus-appearance terminology

> what are the scenarios where the focus isn’t visible that we are 
allowing in the AA version?

The scenario we were trying to get away from was requiring the item with 
focus to meet these appearance requirements all the time until another 
item takes focus. A few scenarios
- the user does something to cause the item with focus to be obscured by 
something else, such content (that does not take focus) that appears on 
hover
- the user repositions their viewport, causing the item with focus to no 
longer be visible; obviously we want that to be okay, but conversely we 
don't want the author to have the item with focus out of the viewport as 
it RECEIVES focus. So we need to combine the "when" of the preamble with 
the final bullet (the item with focus isn't entirely obscured) so that we 
both ensure the author doesn't hide it AND ensure the user scrolling the 
page doesn't automatically fail the SC.

That's why we want the preamble construct to be: When 
[UICs/elements/controls] receive keyboard focus, 



Michael Gower
Senior Consultant in Accessibility
IBM Design


1803 Douglas Street, Victoria, BC  V8T 5C3
gowerm@ca.ibm.com
cellular: (250) 661-0098 *  fax: (250) 220-8034



From:   "Andrew Kirkpatrick" <akirkpat@adobe.com>
To:     "Alastair Campbell" <acampbell@nomensa.com>, "Wilco Fiers" 
<wilco.fiers@deque.com>
Cc:     "WCAG list (w3c-wai-gl@w3.org)" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date:   2022/01/31 06:22 AM
Subject:        [EXTERNAL] Re: Focus-appearance terminology



> Also, “receive” was used to allow for scenarios where the focus 
indicator changes or is subsequently hidden. The AAA version uses “has” to 
be stricter. We can get to the same place without creating different 
terms, which is why I am suggesting ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart 
This Message Is From an External Sender 
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> Also, “receive” was used to allow for scenarios where the focus 
indicator changes or is subsequently hidden. The AAA version uses “has” to 
be stricter.
 
We can get to the same place without creating different terms, which is 
why I am suggesting “keyboard operable user interface control”. 
 
And, if we use “When any keyboard operable user interface control displays 
a visible focus indicator, the focus indicator meets the following:” then 
we aren’t saying that it has to be shown at all times.
 
The issue that I’m trying to avoid is creating additional terms to refer 
to user interface controls. If we need to constrain the SC to not include 
all UIC then we should use language that we already have in place to do 
so.
 
Related to the AA/AAA difference, I thought that the main distinction was 
to increase the contrast ratio, change the minimum area, and strengthen 
the obscured part – what are the scenarios where the focus isn’t visible 
that we are allowing in the AA version?
 
Thanks,
AWK
 
 
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick 
 
Wilco,
Does a landmark or other target of a skip navigation that receives focus 
but doesn’t have other keyboard interaction need to show that focus 
visually? I can see the argument as to why it should (people can more 
easily tell where they are on the page) but also why it shouldn’t (people 
will think that they can do something with the focused control).
 
I do think that there is benefit to starting with:
 
    <p>When any [thing] has a visible focus indicator, the focus indicator 
meets the following:</p>
 
(this is also a change to remove the “receive” bit and uses the language 
from the focus visible SC.)
 
Building on that we could say:
    <p>When any keyboard operable user interface element has a visible 
focus indicator, the focus indicator meets the following:</p>
 
Of course, in the definition of User Interface Component is this note:
What is meant by "component" or "user interface component" here is also 
sometimes called "user interface element".
I don’t think that “Interactive element” is any different than “keyboard 
operable user interface element” and therefore not any different from 
“keyboard operable user interface component” – maybe we just need to add 
in the “keyboard operable” ahead of “user interface component” to solve 
this?
 
 
Thanks,
AWK
 
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Director, Accessibility
Adobe 
 
akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk

 
 
From: Wilco Fiers <wilco.fiers@deque.com>
Date: Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 6:31 PM
To: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>
Cc: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Focus-appearance terminology
Resent-From: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 6:29 PM
 
Hey Alastair,
I'm glad Andrew raised this. I didn't quite realize what that's doing. We 
shouldn't make the assumption that everything that's focusable is a user 
interface component. In particular landmarks are often used as the target 
of skip links. Changing to component or element as you suggest would mean 
those are then in scope of the SC.
 
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 5:02 PM Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com> 
wrote:
Hi everyone,
 
(And particularly Andrew and Bruce who raised this.)
 
We were discussing the start of focus-appearance. The published version 
is:
“When user interface components receive keyboard focus, an area of the 
focus indicator meets the following:”
 
The proposed update was:
“When components receive keyboard focus, an area of the focus indicator 
meets the following:”
 
With the note, that was intended to scope it to the underlying component 
rather than the perceived component.
 
As an alternative, how about borrowing from 4.1.1 and using element:
 
“When elements receive keyboard focus, an area of the focus indicator 
meets the following:”
 
And then swapping ‘element’ in for component in each subsequent usage.
 
Kind regards,
 
-Alastair
 
-- 
 
@alastc / www.nomensa.com
 
 
 

 
-- 
Wilco Fiers
Axe-core & Axe-linter product owner - WCAG 3 Project Manager - Facilitator 
ACT Task Force