Re: Guideline 2 & device independence

Responses in JRG:
At 10:47 AM 9/22/99 -0400, Marja-Riitta Koivunen wrote:
>Sorry, but I still think guideline 2 is too device specific when it talks
>about keyboard access.

JRG: We included the guideline to specifically highlight the problem of
keyboard support.  The group felt developers need to see this clearly in
the guidelines.  It does not mean only keyboard funcationality should be
provided, but that all functionalities should be available through the
keyboard.  And if your user agent does not support a keyboard, the
checkpoints would not apply to your user agent.

>
>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)"?

JRG: We want all functionalities to be accessible to the user, not just
what the developer thinks will be important or frequently used.

>
>Then the checkpoints probably need to be rephrased a little but keyboard
>can be used as example.
>
>What do you think?

JRG: I think this is old territory for the group.  I don't think there is
any new information here that we have not already discussed.

>
>Marja

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Chair, W3C WAI User Agent Working Group
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
WWW:	http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
		http://www.w3.org/wai/ua
		http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 1999 16:18:56 UTC