radio button wiki review

aloha, all!

i wanted to reply to LisaP's request that i review the radio button 
ARIA best practices wiki page:

i am still convinced that radio buttons should have only 2 navigation 
keys available/assigned to them: the UpArrow and the DownArrow

i still think that in the case of radio buttons, movement between buttons
should be limited to the up and down buttons, and that tabbing to a 
grouping without a preselected button gives that grouping focus, and a 
DownArrow or UpArrow starts navigation of the grouping (down moving 
forward, up moving backwards)

LeftArrow and RightArrow should be reserved for tree navigation -- why?

1. one moves through a tree using UpArrow and DownArrow

2. one expands/collapses tree items using LeftArrow and RightArrow

3. the TAB key in the tree view moves focus to the next 
   element/widget/plane/canvas/window/frame

this is the "expected user experience" on GUI platforms -- even in 
property sheets one tabs from grouping to grouping via the TAB mechanism

this also means that even if radio buttons are separated into 2 columns 
to conserve screen real estate, the UpArrow and DownArrow buttons SHOULD 
be sufficient to cycle through an explicit set of radio buttons, no 
matter how they are rendered, in order, beginning with the first radio 
button defined for the grouping unless the grouping includes an author-
defined pre-selected radio button; moreover, the "tree view" has been 
working its way into HTML for quite some time now, and i don't think 
that the activate branch to expose leaves will forever be hyperlinks 
(activate once to expand, activate a second time to close, be they 
textually or graphically linked), but rather will build custom widgets 
that function as "true" trees...

gregory.

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CONSERVATIVE, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils,
as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them 
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             Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
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Received on Tuesday, 4 September 2007 17:57:24 UTC