RE: Guideline 2 & device independence

Actually, there are those in the world who could use the "keyboard" language
to make things inaccessible.  What we really want is access via character
codes, such as the Control-X code.  So long as the UA uses standard system
hooks to get character codes from the keyboard, all is good.  But if the
author decides to read the keyboard hardware directly, alternative access
technologies would be cut out.  The question is how to phrase the desire for
direct shortcuts via character codes or keyboard events (the Alt key doesn't
have a character code, I don't think, but might be used to control some
types of system events, such as activating the menu bar.) in language that
is unambiguous.

Denis Anson, MS, OTR
Assistant Professor
College Misericordia
301 Lake St.
Dallas, PA 18612

Member since 1989:
RESNA: An International Association of Assistive Techology Professionals
Website: http://www.resna.org
RESNA ANNUAL CONFERENCE -- "RESNA 2000"
ORLANDO, FL, JUNE 28 -- July 2, 2000

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org]On Behalf
Of mark novak
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 12:43 PM
To: Marja-Riitta Koivunen; w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
Subject: Re: Guideline 2 & device independence

MN:  in theory I agree with alot of what you're saying Marja-Riitta.  One
of the things in favor of access, as defined in terms of keyboard access,
is that
voice, Morse, scanning, switch, etc., input methods all get translated into
keyboard events inside the operating system, thus by "default" if an object
is accessible via the keyboard, it should be accessible via these other
methods.

No guarentees for the future, but any such change would break alot of
software.



At 10:47 AM 9/22/99, Marja-Riitta Koivunen wrote:
>Sorry, but I still think guideline 2 is too device specific when it talks
>about keyboard access.
>
>To understand it better I first explain how I think the system works and
>then what I think we try to say in higher level.
>
>An input device has any number of buttons, maybe location info, microphone
>etc. The computer has a device driver that converts the pushing of buttons,
>saying a word, using morse code etc. to set of events that the user agent
>can understand. When UA gets the events it can activate functions.
>
>Some of the events activate a user level function directly. These are
>shortcuts to the functions and often the event names are related to
>keyboard e.g. "control X".
>
>Often in graphical UI events consist of button pushes and pointer
>movements. The location info of a pointing device is used to decide which
>graphical object should handle the events and activate the functions and
>again the object may use the location info inside to decide which function
>is activated.
>
>So I guess what we want here is to be able to activate functions also
>directly without a need of the pointing information which may be hard to
>create in the device driver with certain non pointing devices. In other
>words we want direct shortcuts to the functionality so that non-pointing
>devices can easily provide that. The fact that the names in the event level
>often come from a keyboard world does not mean we only want keyboard. For
>instance, the "control X" event could be created by the device driver of
>speech device when user says "delete" or creates morse code sequence "-..".
>
>So could we state the GL 2 something like "Provide direct shortcuts to the
>functionality of the user interface (that can be activated by non-pointing
>devices)"?
>
>Then the checkpoints probably need to be rephrased a little but keyboard
>can be used as example.
>
>What do you think?
>
>Marja

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 1999 14:46:05 UTC