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

Hi, Rich-

Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote (on 2/14/10 7:02 PM):
> 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.

I'm a bit confused.  None of the events being considered for deprecation 
are currently supported in any version of Internet Explorer: not 
Mutation Events in general or DOMAttrModified in particular; not 
DOMActivate; and not DOMFocusIn or DOMFocusOut.

Some of them are supported in Firefox, Opera, or WebKit, but not 
universally.  As far as we can tell, very little Web content uses these 
events.

Unless there are implementations of these events in the AT UAs 
themselves, I don't quite understand what we would be breaking.  Can you 
expand on that, with some specific examples?

The deprecation strategy we have outlined is exactly intended to 
transition from these poorly-supported events to equivalents which, by 
their more efficient design, are apt to be implemented more widely and 
thus enable better accessibility.  Note again that we are not removing 
the events, but deprecating them in favor of replacements.

If I'm misunderstanding your concern, or missing some specific part of 
the ecosystem, please let me know.

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs

Received on Monday, 15 February 2010 00:53:18 UTC