Treatment of "Edit form controls nested inside editing hosts" HTML 5 section

Hi.

My question concerns to behaviour of HTML form elements inside of
editable area (see HTML 5 section "contenteditable attribute -> User
editing actions"
(http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#user-editing-actions). Do
HTML form elements inside of editable area have similar behaviour on
user input as HTML form elements placed in not editiable document? For
example, if user clicks on button then will onclick event handler be
invoked or, for example, is user able to choose an option from
HTML:select? The spec says: "When an editable form control is edited,
the changes must be reflected in both its current value and its
default value; for select elements it means updating the option
elements' defaultSelected DOM attribute as well as the selected DOM
attribute". I can see the unique treatment of this statement which is
user should be able to operate with form elements inside of editable
area like he does it usually, i.e. all keyboard shortcuts and mouse
work as usual. As well partially that means tab key on form element
should be used to navigate to next form element. Summary of this would
be next: if the focus is on form element then keyboard and mouse
behaves the same way like the form element would not be inside of
editable area, if focus is on HTML element (like html:p) then keyboard
and mouse behaves as inside of editable area. Technically it looks
reasonable with me but reality is neither IE or Fx follow this rule.
Does this treatment look correct? And how does it look from a11y point
of view?

Thank you.
Alex.

Received on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 08:56:43 UTC