RE: Change in context?

Hi Peter,

Is there a programmatic delay between highlighting an option in the dropdown, the results showing, and the dropdown closing? 

Does system focus remain on the select once the filtering process is complete? Is the option element removed from the DOM or the children of the select modified in any way?

Placing visible text ahead of the select is equivalent to an adjacent button with a sensible label such as 'apply filter' because (presumably) this text is not just for screen reader users.

Also, I would suggest that this is a filter because the sample is fathomable and is being reduced rather than the sample being unfathomable as is the case in most searches.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Weil <peter.weil@wisc.edu> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2022 11:21 PM
To: ML W3C, WAI <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Change in context?

Would someone who is more familiar with the intentions behind WCAG definitions please clarify exactly whether “change in context” applies here.

Scenario: A page displays a Wordpress category archive of posts, likely only the most recent 10 or so.The page also includes a select element and a text input for filtering the posts by author. Upon selecting an author or entering text (there is no submit button), the page automatically changes to display (without reloading) the appropriate subset of posts based on the filtering logic.

So I’m looking at SC 3.2.2 and wondering whether it applies to this case.

The WCAG definition of “change of context” lists four bullet points, only one of which directly addresses a change in content:

4. "[changes of] content that changes the meaning of the Web page.”

https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#context-changedef

How does one determine the “meaning” of a page such as this? Applying the filters will certainly change the content, but at what point does changing the content change the meaning? It doesn’t help much when a definition doesn’t define the terms it is using to define whatever it is trying to define.

Beyond compliance with WCAG, I’m also grappling with whether it is a good idea to use a select element (it currently contains six or seven options) for applying the filter. But I guess that’s a separate discussion.

Thank you,

Peter


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Peter Weil
Web Developer
University Marketing
University of Wisconsin–Madison
608-220-3089

Received on Tuesday, 25 October 2022 23:03:58 UTC