A comment on 6/3 draft guidelines

My comments follow JR::

From section 5 of the 6/3/98 draft of the guidelines

1.[PRIORITY 1] 
Remember the focus of each view so that when a user leaves a document
and returns, the focus and view are restored. As a user activates links
and returns to previously visited documents that their last view and
focus in the document remain the same. 

JR:: I would rather return to the place where I was reading, but since
the browsers are not using a system cursor to navigate the text I guess
this is as good as it gets.


from UA GUIDELINE section 5::
2.[PRIORITY 1] 
Allow the user to specify that the focus in the current view should
follow changes in the view. For example, as the user scrolls down the
page, the focus might jump to the first element that may take focus that
is visible in the view. Thus, after changing the view, if the user uses
keyboard commands to move or select the focused element, the view does
not abruptly change to another portion of the document with the focused
element. 

JR::
I'm not sure how this would work.  Remember that the screen readers are
oriented toward following the text of the document.  Since the browsers
do not move the system cursor or caret through the text, some screen
readers use another method, commonly called a pseudo cursor.  In
addition, the screen readers react to changes in the focus.

I think there are 2 kinds of scrolling; one where the user is following
the text and one where the user is looking for links or other elements
that take focus.

If I am reading down a page with a screen reader with the view scrolling
and the focus suddenly moves to some new place, will the screen reader
be yanked to the new focus away from the line of text I am reading?
Conversely , if I am moving with the focus from element to element, I
may need to explore the text around the new element to find out where
this is in the document.  How can I do this if the view does not scroll
to the area containing the new focus?  

As I interpret the guideline This "focus follows view" might benefit
screen enlargement software, but i think "view follows focus" would be
better for screen readers.  I am concerned that UA developers may just
adopt "focus follows view" rather than have it as an option, so perhaps
there should be a "view follows focus" feature included in 
the guidelines.



Joe Roeder
Access Technology Specialist
National Industries for the Blind
E-mail:  jroeder@nib.org
Voice:  (703) 578-6524
FAX: 	(703) 998-4217