VoiceOver interaction docs (Was: ARIA BPG Issue: we should not be decreeing complex keyboard interactions)

Found the official documentation that describes interacting with  
content areas.

On Sep 5, 2008, at 1:37 PM, James Craig wrote:

> On Sep 4, 2008, at 6:22 PM, Earl Johnson wrote:
>
>> Would you walk thru a use case for how someone uses VoiceOver to  
>> interact with editable/actionable cells and read-only/navigation- 
>> only interaction cells in a data table and its cells?
>
> I'll see if I can find some official documentation or a demo of the  
> concept.


This is from the Leopard version of the VoiceOver Getting Started  
manual. Apparently the one on the website is still the old version,  
but you can request the current version of the VoiceOver manual by  
emailing accessibility@apple.com.


Interacting with Content Areas
Windows, documents, and webpages often have areas that contain text,  
files, or other
content. When the VoiceOver cursor reaches one of these areas, it  
identifies the content
area. Depending on the application or window, VoiceOver may identify  
these areas as:

• A scroll area
• HTML content
• A list
• A text area
• An outline
• A group
• A table

When you reach a content area, you can navigate past it to something  
else, or you can
interact with the content area to investigate, read, or modify  
something it contains. For
example, a Finder window has a sidebar that contains folders. You can  
skip over the
sidebar to the view browser, or interact with the sidebar to select  
one of its folders.

You use a command to let VoiceOver know that you want to interact with  
the items the
content area contains. Then you use the VoiceOver navigation commands  
to navigate
within the content area. The VoiceOver cursor stays within the  
boundaries of the object
you're interacting with, so when you navigate left, right, up, and  
down, you'll navigate
only to the objects within that area. If you find another object of  
interest, and it
contains objects, you can interact with it as well. Interaction allows  
you to navigate the
larger elements of an application quickly to locate what interests  
you, and it also
provides the control you need to investigate the smallest details.

When you’re done, you use a VoiceOver command to stop the interaction  
and return
the VoiceOver cursor to the previous object or area. You can repeat  
the VoiceOver
command to interact or stop interacting as many times as necessary.  
When there's
nothing more to interact with, or stop interacting with, you'll hear a  
sound effect.

To interact with a content area:
1 Press VO-Shift-Down Arrow to begin interacting.
2 Press Control and Option with the arrow keys to investigate the  
contents.
3 Press VO-Shift-Up Arrow to stop interacting with the content area.

To practice interacting with content areas, see the exercises at the  
end of this chapter.

You can use a VoiceOver command to read everything in the VoiceOver  
cursor,
including content not visible on the screen. This is a quick way to  
find out what a
content area contains. When you use this command on an area that has  
scroll bars, the
contents become visible as VoiceOver reads them.

To read everything in the VoiceOver cursor:
• Press VO-A when the VoiceOver cursor is on a content area.

If you want to navigate or interact with the items in a content area,  
you have to first let
VoiceOver know that you want to interact with the items it contains.  
Then you can use
all the regular VoiceOver commands inside the content area.




> Basically though, in the standard linear reading order, you land on  
> complex widgets like a table grids and are alerted to the item's  
> label and type. For example, "Employees table." At this point, you  
> can either navigate past the widget, or choose to "interact with  
> Employees table." Once you are interacting with the table, your  
> navigation control is limited to that table until you "stop  
> interacting with Employees table."
>
> For example, if you were interacting with a table nested inside  
> another table, key controls for "read row" or "sort by this column"  
> would only affect the table you are interacting with, and not the  
> outer containing table. Once you chose to stop interacting with the  
> inner table, those same key controls would then apply to the outer  
> table. This navigation model allows the user to "drill down" into  
> the item they want to affect, and then "move up out of it" when they  
> are finished.
>
> If you were to think about it in terms of the Document Object Model,  
> interacting with a widget essentially prevents key or navigation  
> events from bubbling up to ancestor nodes. You might also think  
> about in the sense that when you interact with a complex widget, you  
> effectively disable everything outside that widget until you choose  
> to stop interacting with it.