Re: Deprecation of DOMAttrModified (Was: DOMActivate vs. Activation Behavior)

James, I know you know this but for the rest  - this change will break more
than just screen readers. It will break magnifiers, alternate input
devices, etc., and accessibility test tools across all the platforms. We
need to consider a deprecation runway to get these applications to adapt.
These applications just don't sit there and poll the browser. Essentially,
if we are not careful we will put the whole ecosystem casters up.
If this is being planned we should look at the typical development release
cycles for the major ATVs. and time it properly.

What I would do is state that an event is being deprecated and give ATVs a
runway to switch over before turning off the old event model. Like anything
else, the ATs will still be left with the baggage of supporting the old
browsers. For example, they are still saddled with IE6 support as many
customers have no reason to switch. We should also consider doing the
unthinkable and tell the ATVs the browser release time frame for this
change.

Rich

Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist


                                                                           
             James Craig                                                   
             <jcraig@apple.com                                             
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             Sent by:                  Sean Hogan                          
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                                       David Bolter                        
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             02/09/2010 07:20          Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>, Doug    
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                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: Deprecation of DOMAttrModified  
                                       (Was: DOMActivate vs. Activation    
                                       Behavior)                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




On Feb 9, 2010, at 3:46 PM, Sean Hogan wrote:

      On 10/02/10 8:37 AM, James Craig wrote:
            On Feb 9, 2010, at 1:03 PM, David Bolter wrote:

                  That said, I'm not sure if this pattern is used a lot
                  today.

            As far as I'm aware, it's not used at all today, because there
            isn't a way to implement it.

      Currently IE has onpropertychange and Firefox / Opera have
      DOMAttrModified.
      Aren't they sufficient?

Even if DOMAttrModified wasn't threatened with deprecation and was
implemented consistently across all major browsers, it would still require
additional implementation on the part of a screen reader, but no screen
reader dev team is going to waste time implementing a feature at relies on
a deprecated event model.