Removal of guideline on "Support the Keyboard"

Bryan,
I added to the issues list your comments related to the removal of the
Guideline "Support the Keyboard".  

http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html#113

There are working group members who support your point of view and working
group members that felt that the guidelines should not have any checkpoints
related to a specific device (i.e. keyboard), but instead rely on the more
generic term "device independence".    The advantage of the more general term
is that can apply to a wider range of situations and technologies, but requires
more interpretation by the developer to understand what it means for their
technology.  The advantage of specifying specific devices like the keyboard is
that it may be more apparent to developers exactly which device they need to
focus there attention, although developers working on devices without keyboards
maybe be confused by this requirement.  

In the end, after several discussions of the issue, the group reached consensus
with removing the guideline related related to the keyboard and dispersing the
keyboard related checkpoints to other guidelines.  A specific checkpoint was
retained to indicate the importance of implement user agent functionality
through the keyboard device.

1.4 Ensure that every functionality offered through the user interface is
available through the standard keyboard API. [Priority 1] 

The group response to this issue will depend on the response of other reviewers
to this issue.  
Jon



Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Chair, W3C WAI User Agent Working Group
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
College of Applied Life Studies
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
WWW: http://www.w3.org/wai/ua

Received on Thursday, 11 November 1999 09:29:39 UTC