Re: JavaScript and Accessibility

> a drop down list falls into this category, are you claiming this is not 
> a document?

A drop down list is a form control, which, at best, is only part of
a document.  Forms on the web really fall into a category separate from
documents, especially if they are used for data collection, rather than
to access a search facility.

I think it is generally understood, though, that the scope of the
WAI guidelines extends to forms as well as pure documents.

Note, that, although menus are often implemented as pull down list,
in my view, they are really nested lists, with a special styling, and
it is a failure to understand this, combined with inadequate support
to style lists collapsibly that has led to the use of select boxes.

I have trouble understanding the use of "game" to refer to a pulldown
list.

To me, a document, is a unit of information designed to communicate all
that information to the recipient.  A pull down menu only meets that
requirement to the limited extent that it tells the recipient all the
possible choices, when they may not have previously known them.  Although
not so relevant in your case, my definition specifically excludes a
computer program that seeks to keep the underlying knowledge a trade
secret and only supply the results to the user; that one might call
an "agent", or simply a program.

> there is clearly an ill defined continuum, and we need to progress from 
> the work on documents.

There ought to be existing standards that already cover things at the
extremes of that continuum.  E.g. what rules exist for DVD menus or
for X-Box games?

You are complaining that restrictions on the use of scripting in web
documents frustrates what you want to do, but I'm saying it may not,
because what you are doing may fall outside the scope of standards on
web documents, even though you are improvising by using tools that 
claim to be for handling web documents.  (Note that most "web browsers"
have capabilities are that are aimed at meeting business wants that
are not necessarily consistent with being a good *user* agent.)

Received on Saturday, 14 June 2003 06:32:21 UTC