Minutes from June 15 DHTML Keyboard Style Guide Conference Call

Hello,
 
Here are the minutes from Friday's DHTML keyboard style guide call.
People on the call reached concensus on behaviors for tab panels and
have decided to move on to address tree controls and radio buttons on
the June 29 call. Jon Gunderson has already posted a tab panel example
on the wiki at:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/PF/ARIA/BestPractices/NavigationGeneral
 
Note: The tab panel only works in Firefox at this time. If testing with
screen readers, it is critical to disable the screen reader-specific
default web page browsing mode (virtual PC in JAWS and Browse Mode in
Window-Eyes).
 
Minutes:
Attendees:
Chris Blouch    AOL
Donald Evans    AOL
Becky Gibson    IBM
Al Gilman    WAI-PF
Jon Gunderson    UIL
Tom Wlodkowski    AOL
 
Outcomes from discussion of Tab Panel Keyboard Behavior. 
1. The goal of the DHTML style guide is to minimize conflicts with
browser keyboard commands. In  order to advance the group's attention to
other widgets and to accelerate possible adoption, attendees agreed that
for now, Control+Tab and Control+Shift Tab will not be recommended for
use on dynamic tab panels since Firefox and IE use these keystrokes for
tabbed browsing. Further comment on this is welcome, both on the Xtech
list and wiki. Jon Gunderson will update the example currently on the
wiki to reflect this decision.
 
2. Right and Down Arrow activate the next tab title when focus is on the
tab's title. 

3. Left and Up Arrow activate the previous tab when focus is on the
tab's title. 

4. Pressing the Tab key when focus is on the tab's title moves focus to
the first actionable item in the content of the tab. 

5. Control+Page Up Moves focus to the previous tab's title when focus is
on the tab's title or anywhere in the tab's content (the alternative to
Control+Shift+Tab).
 
6. Control+PageDown Moves focus to the next tab's title whether focus is
on the tab's title or anywhere in the tab's content (alternative to
Control+Tab). 

7. When appropriate, Shift F10 brings up a context menu which may
contain a Close or Delete option when focus is on a closable or
deletable tab title . The end-user is notified about a context menu by
the page author leveraging Aria popup role -- need further clarity on
this from WAI PF group.

Note: For various technical and page performance reasons, it may not
always be possible to, or desireable by the page author to  update the
tab-specific content when the user moves focus across the tab titles to
review the selection of tabs in a tab panel. Pressing the Tab key moves
focus to and triggers the refresh of the content area to reflect the
active tab's content. It is also critical for the page author to set the
tab order appropriately in the tab panel content area for each active
tab.
 
Action Items: 
1. Tom to issue meeting notes to list (done). 
2. Jon to update wiki. 
3. Al/Michael to discuss a better defined section of the wiki to enable
easier access to this group's work for comments and tracking purposes.
 
The next call will be on Friday, June 29 at noon eastern time. It would
be great to see broader participation on these calls, particularly from
consumers.
 
Tom
 
Tom Wlodkowski
Director of Accessibility, AOL LLC
Phone: 703-265-1999
Email: thomas.wlodkowski@corp.aol.com