Re: touchscreens and interactive whiteboards

thanks to Matthew and John,

Matthew first, strangely the BT payphone kiosk  has no sound, make of 
that what you will.

John, we are developing tools that enable people with severe learning 
difficulties to browse the web independently.
Leaves is one of our most successful products to date. right mouse 
events have been disabled across the whole peepo.com domain.
Nearly all our users have problems with clicking, and very few would 
learn the usefulness that it offers.
left click was disabled at leaves yesterday, for this game there is 
nothing to click, and in MSIE it changes the screen in an unpleasant 
way.
many users click erratically, and without intention.

We are trying to separate and identify the requisite processes. for 
instance it seems that refresh may be of more use than back to slow 
developers.
They wish to try out an activity repeatedly. The leaf activity is set 
to repeat indefinitely, but another activity may offer the need to 
click on a virtual (eg activity window rather than browser based) 
refresh button to aid learning.

It is true that flash could provide this activity but to what benefit?

we are investigating in what way games can be made accessible. this is 
a complex issue.
for instance touchscreens allow 2 player engagement with the squirrel 
game, which is great fun. interactive whiteboards enable whole gesture 
sweeping of the leaves, but does tabbing provide an enjoyable means to 
clear the leaves? as the leaves are randomly placed the user is 
learning a fairly unique and perhaps not that helpful process. 
designing games that are playable without a screen is another stretch 
of the imagination.

The creation of accessible games is perhaps our ultimate accessibility 
goal, peepo.com and pmld.org are a small step.
It would be helpful if w3c/wai had a list of suitable examples.

Jonathan

On Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 01:17 PM, John Foliot - bytown internet 
wrote:

> Having used an older Panasonic Toughbook (CF27) with a built in touch 
> screen
> (http://www.panasonic.com/computer/notebook/html/01a2.htm) I have had 
> some
> experience.  In this incarnation, there is no right-click functionality
> directly from the screen... the best I could accomplish was to tap a 
> "focus"
> onto the screen and then use the right click button on the laptop.  
> Care was
> needed as well as tapping focus on a hyperlink was the same as 
> "clicking"...
> off we went.  Also of note is the fact that the touch screen required a
> certain amount of pressure to register a click.  As far as JavaScript 
> event
> handlers are concerned, while onMouseover and onFocus technically 
> worked,
> they ultimately also applied the onClick event handler, as the pressure
> required for the "focus" was also enough for the "click".
>
> Since it is a lap top, with a screen of approximately 12", this rig 
> also
> allows me to bring home the point about scalable text; it is also 
> useful for
> illustrating the need for large enough "hot spots" when creating links,
> image maps, etc.  Really tiny icons, small text links (imagine trying 
> to
> click on the letter "I" from an alphabetical list: "...G H I J K 
> L...") are
> also problematic, as are radio buttons and checkboxes; for while my 
> hands
> and fingers are not overly large for a man's hand, they aren't petit 
> either
> <grin>.    The issue with small icons led me to experiment with sizing
> images with "ems", with some nifty results (see:
> http://www.bytowninternet.com/examples/relative.html)
>
> Jonathan, I'm a little confused.  When visiting your "leaves page" all 
> mouse
> click functionality has been removed.  Does not removing "expected"
> behaviours from a page (and arguably an operating system) also present
> accessibility problems?  If a user (any user) normally uses the right 
> click
> functionality of the standard Windows environment and attempts to do so
> here, they are presented with a "new" model of behaviour (i.e. right 
> click
> does not work).  Heck, even the most basic "left click" on the screen 
> has
> been disabled, again opening the possibility of "confusion" to the 
> average
> user.  And I won't even begin to surmise what "Access Bob" will say 
> about
> this page, as rendered in a text only browser (or for that matter JAWs 
> or
> IBM Homepage Reader or any browser which does not support JavaScript).
>
> And so you have built an application specific, task specific, audience
> specific web page.  Does it serve a function and it's intended audience
> well?  Probably... I can see this as being a great training tool for 
> those
> with poor gross and fine motor skills.  But accessible, in the broader
> context?  I don't get it... this could have been created in Flash as 
> well,
> and served the same function.
>
> JF
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
>> Behalf Of Jonathan Chetwynd
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 3:39 AM
>> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>> Subject: touchscreens and interactive whiteboards
>>
>>
>>
>> Some of our students learning to use a computer were having problems
>> with mouse clicking, that is they were inadvertently and repeatedly
>> clicking without intended purpose. Not all like trackballs, so we
>> recently removed right and left click events on this page
>> http://www.pmld.org/leaves. How does this effect touchscreens and
>> interactive whiteboard users?
>> We have a very broad range of users, and are concerned to get this
>> right if at all possible.
>>
>> Does anyone know how touchscreens and interactive whiteboards activate
>> onclick and onmouseover events?
>>
>> some I know have a 'hold' facility, but has anyone seen a survey?
>>
>> Does WCAG address this difference sufficiently, it may be that this
>> needs some additional specification similar to that for onfocus.
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2003 11:16:17 UTC