Re: Recommendation for Disabled Items

In the presentation at CSUN put on by SAP, they provided two navigation 
methods in their web app. Tab moves to interactive elements or you can 
use control+b or control+n to move forward or back through every 
element. While we don't need to nail down actual key assignments here, 
would it make sense to consider a similar model of a second key combo to 
"navigate all" rather than "navigate actionable" ?

CB

Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
>
> Hi David,
>
>> Voiceover is always interactive and browseable and provides 
>> information about disabled/(dimmed) items in menus and dialogues 
>> depending on how the app is coded.
>
> Voiceover is "smart" in this regard.  When Voiceover is active, 
> keyboard navigation to disabled widgets (e.g., menu items) is enabled; 
> but, when Voiceover is turned off, keyboard navigation skips over 
> disabled items.  I believe the assumption is that if one is using 
> Voiceover, one cannot see disabled/dimmed items, but wants to know of 
> their existence.  However, if one is not using Voiceover, one can see 
> them, and can see that they are disabled, and so need not waste one's 
> time navigating to them only to be told they are disabled.
>
> Becky is correct in that if a user knows that an item is present but 
> disabled, then they probably do want to skip over it.  The problem 
> arises on their initial use of the interface.  At that point, they 
> don't know what is present and want to discover functionality, by 
> navigating to disabled items as they normally would.  They want to 
> explore the possibilities.  Once they know what's what, however, they 
> may well want to skip the things they know don't/won't work.
>
> The idea of making this is a user preference -- let the user decide 
> what they want to happen in this regard -- is most appealing.
>

Received on Tuesday, 20 May 2008 15:52:02 UTC