Re: drag'n'drop is grab'n'drop for non-visual users

I think maintaining the kind of cut and paste model that many users are
used to is the best way. There are questions about the "purity" of this
model but in the context of trying to "grab" a modifier key that could
be pressed to put the UA into "grab mode" (screen readers have/had forms
mode, why not grab mode?). The user could enter grab mode then ARIA
regions, or HTML 5 regions that have this functionality could be
activated and primed as being selectable/droppable. The user then Shift
and down arrow to select multiple items. Then tab to active drop areas
and release the items using Ctrl + V. There could be a preference in the
UA for "When in grab mode automatically grab the contents of the current
grabbable area" and so on.

Whatever the final decision is the closer this whole thing could be to
what users currently do or expect the better, as Aaron mentioned. Also
Ian pointed out the APIs for drag and drop and copy and paste are the
same so it sounds like most of the work is done.

So you have the usual Copy and Paste functionality for normal mode and
then the same keys in grab mode perform "grab" like functions. This kind
of thing would not be unusual for users of AT.

Cheers

Josh

Received on Tuesday, 6 January 2009 15:44:51 UTC