Re: Success criteria 1.4.4

Hi, Felix! Thanks for the thoughtful response.


>The fact that he repeated an apparently ignored statement from the day before lead me to believe he was
>interested in some discussion of the topic. So was I, so I seeded it.

Sarcastic, contentious questions is more than "seeding" discussion of the topic. There are other, more respectful ways to check out with Thierry whether he ignored a statement or simply didn't catch it. And there are other, more respectful ways to get the discussion going.

>Thierry has probably been here (and other web issues mailing lists) longer than I, and I know he knows
>plenty. I'm sure he knows I meant no such implication, and if I'm wrong about that, I'm sorry.

At least as important as the tone Thierry inferred is the tone perceived by newcomers to our discussion. I'll try to be careful to ensure that my contributions come across respectfully. I hope the rest of us will, too.

>My "side by side" comparisons of pages are generally over/under so as to better
>judge average real world usage (horizontal scroll avoided; vertical scroll near
>normal). :-)

I guess we have different goals in our side by side comparisons. And I marvel at the concept of "average real world usage." How do we find that average? And if "average real world usage" is our guiding concept, why should we be concerned with accessibility at all?

> You've made a personal choice to limit the width of your browser window. You
> can't seriously expect designers to limit widths of their designs so as to
>prevent horizontal scroll for users who do that, particularly while at the
> same time zooming, do you? O_O

Limit widths of their designs? No. But to allow their designs to respond to the user's constraints and preferences? Absolutely. Considering that my situation mimics a common case among people with low vision, I absolutely expect designs to be well behaved on zooming.

And at work I've rotated my monitor—at first to cope with the result of a keystroke combination I hit by accident that rotated the image 90 degrees. I didn't know what I had done, so I couldn't undo it. After a few days of working that way, I found that it worked better for me. Again, my actual window for any one application is often 5:8, often 5:4, and often in between. Since I've done this, I've noticed several others around my large agency who have theirs set the same way. And I've even inspired a few others to try it out. 

Are you saying that we shouldn't be able to use our devices according to their capabilities and not be hindered by a designer's or developer's preconceived notions of our workspace? Seriously? Again, if everything must fit one single, standard condition, how do we achieve accessibility?

I suspect that most of the problems I encounter are from inconsiderate design, not my own settings. But if I'm missing out on techniques that I could and should be using to control this behavior through my browser, please help me out by pointing them out to me.

After all, others who get these e-mails might learn something useful from specific suggestions. All they'll learn from our discussing hypothetical expectations is that we're a couple of windbags.

We should decide which best fits our goal and behave accordingly.

Cliff