- From: Shelby Moore <shelby@coolpage.com>
- Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:23:36 -0400
- To: "Alan Gresley" <alan@css-class.com>
- Cc: "Boris Zbarsky" <bzbarsky@mit.edu>, "www-style list" <www-style@w3.org>
>> Perhaps I can allocate more time thinking about this at some point, >> because CSS as it is now really frustrates me. The tsuris seems mostly >> to >> revolve around the fact that CSS is not designed to support the new Web >> applications which want to keep all their content inside the viewport >> and >> create overflowed scrolled sub-areas instead of overflowing the >> viewport. > > > Perhaps this is due to the fact that someone using a keyboard can not > easy scroll the page and the overflowed scrolled sub-areas (which are > really boxes with overflow:auto) and switch between them. The focus > either has to be on the viewport or the overflowed scrolled sub-areas > and this focus has to be changed to scroll either one. > > This is an accessibility issue. Afaics, that is an orthogonal concern, which can be handled by the UA. For example, the UA may provide Page Up and Page Down keys, and may use the the Tab key and/or shortcut keys to move the focus around. Also the UA should give some indication of focus-- afaik they do not now. It is really a failed assumption that all web apps need to scroll contiguously in the viewport. Imo, that was a design error. If you are really concerned about accessibility and usability, then just ponder the how unusable an application is if you are only looking at one tile of it and have to scroll the whole app around. Rather the web app designer can better separate concerns within the app, and segregate work flows into areas that can be sorted by priorities. The keyboard access is an orthogonal issue and UAs need to improve in that area.
Received on Friday, 22 October 2010 15:24:13 UTC