Re: Design Question

At 06:26 AM 2001-01-24 -0800, Kelly Ford wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>Does anyone know which, if any, of the WAI or 508 guidelines or standards 
>would address the following situation.  Suppose you have a web-based e-mail 
>system and want to give the user the ability to create folders for e-mail 
>sorting.  The page has a link to create a new folder and when selected it 
>opens an edit box with the text "new folder" already in the edit box.  The 
>user can type something new into this field and as soon as focus is moved 
>away from the field changes take effect.
>
>Under accessibility design guidelines is such acceptable?  Or does a 
>specific link or control need to be provided to allow for the folder name 
>to be submitted?
>

Hi, Kelly

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines are not official as of yet.  But the
draft that the working group is working on says that you should have the
option
of configuring your browser so it will check back with you before the
action of
this form takes effect.  In this case, the action is to create a mail folder
with the name that was in the edit box when the focus left the edit box.

The language in the draft is

   8.8 Allow configuration so the user is prompted to confirm any
          form submission not caused by explicit user request to
          activate a form submit control. [Priority 2]
          Note: For example, do not submit a form automatically when a
          menu option is selected, when all fields of a form have been
          filled out, or when a mouseover event occurs. The user
          agent may satisfy this checkpoint by prompting the user to
          confirm all form submissions.
          [535]Techniques for checkpoint 8.8

You will find the latest draft at 

http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/UAAG10

Al

PS: For those who didn't think to look for this under "orientation," it is
there because this rule is interpreted as "the system should give the user
fair
warning of what it is about to do."  Relates to the general HCI principle
about
"the system's response to user input should be predictable."  One can often
get
away with short-circuit onChange commission of actitions (submit the form)
in a
visual, GUI environment.  However it is not safe to do this in a user
interface
environment where the display is limited to a linear stream of audio.  In the
latter case it makes more sense to be sure the user knows that they are
committing to an action before the system performs the action.


>Thanks,
>
>Kelly
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 January 2001 12:19:37 UTC