RE: Focus visible

Well said Sir. Low vision is badly served by the WCAG checkpoints – whether that’s the intention or not. I don’t actually care if testers (I am one) found 2.4.11 difficult to test or designers didn’t like it messing their beautiful visions – both checkpoints have real world consequences to keyboard users (not only those with low vision – think short term memory/other cognition/just efficiency).

My gruntle is well and truly dissed by the further watering down today of the already ridiculous 2.4.11 to AAA

Kevin

From: Guy Hickling <guy.hickling@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2023 3:03 PM
To: WAI Interest Group discussion list <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Focus visible

The far more serious issue, in all this, is not that the Focus Visible SC has been restored to AA, but that the new SC to make focus indicators much more strongly visible appears to have been discarded. (That was why they moved 2.4.7 from AA to A.) In the earlier drafts of WCAG 2.2 the new SC was numbered 2.4.11 and named Focus Visible (Enhanced) - you can still see those earlier versions on record, to see what I mean.

The the whole history of the WCAG's lack of consideration for people with poor eyesight (I am one, which is why I frequently rant on about this!), just shows how little people care about these people with poor eyesight, and I maintain is very sad. SC2.4.7 Focus Visible allowed any kind of focus indicator no matter how faint and difficult to see. Then SC1.4.11 was added in 2.1, ensuring focus indicators were at least 3 to 1 contrast. But they could still be the faintest of dotted lines.

So SC2.4.11 Focus Visible (Enhanced) was introduced to, at last, require a minimum area of high-viz pixels, to produce something people with poor vision could actually see. And we finally, after lots of discussion over several months, achieved something that was actually useful in solving the problem. But that then was relegated to AAA (now there's a Level that hardly anyone ever bothers with!) Instead, that Focus Visible (Enhanced) was suddenly revised to give it two options, A and B, B being the original version of the SC. But the options were either/or, and option A was worded such that the newer option A completely nullified what option B required. So B no longer had any force.

Option A, when you looked at it, continued to allow focus indicators to be a thin dotted line, as still used by some web designers who don't want to spoil the pretty looks of their page. It made Focus Visible (Enhanced) completely toothless, and was a complete disaster and a monument to poor draftsmanship and last minute change. So, presumably, that is why it has now been discarded!

(NB: To avoid confusion over numbering, I should explain that the current Focus Not Obscured SC was therefore was moved down the numbering, becoming 2.4.11 in its place - it would have been 2.1.12 if the Focus Visible (Enhanced) had been retained. Focus Not Obscured is a more recently added SC about an entirely different matter, to do with not obscuring focused items under other content such as fixed page headers.)

I am glad, of course, that the WCAG looks after blind people very well. But people with poor vision are just as important, and there are far more of them than there are blind people! Almost all of us end up with poor or very poor vision as we get closer to old age; we ought to be thinking about our own futures, as well as of those people already with poor eyesight. We should be taking it much more seriously than anyone does!




Kevin Prince

Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant



E kevin.prince@fostermoore.com

Christchurch

fostermoore.com

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