Edit comment LC-974 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

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Comment LC-974: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org>; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Resolution status:
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Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
Navigation is a User Agent function enabled by structure in the content. This is not a content guideline, but a user experience requirement handled in the User Agent.

Proposed Change:

Replace with a narrower provision that says "navigation paths defined in the content encoding correspond to the logical order information which is the subject of 1.3.3"; Related issues: (space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMB] [LGR] 5 Sept: We really don't necessarily mean that the tab order follows the content order; if CSS is used to reposition navigation links that occur at the beginning of the content so that they are rendered at the end, we don't want to require that the tab order jump down to the navigation links. SC 1.3.3 now reads "1.3.3 When the sequence in which content is presented affects its meaning, a correct reading sequence can be programmatically determined." Can we make 2.4.6 harmonize with this in some way? [SM] 5 Sept, define "sequentially navigated" as navigated in programmatically determined content order. [SM] 15/08/06 15/08/2006 The Commenter is essentially suggesting that we need to define "sequentially navigated". Related to "SC 1.3.3 When the sequence of the content affects its meaning, that sequence can be programmatically determined." 2.4.6 is a Level 3 SC - can sequentially be defined as in the order of the "file on the wire"? Or does it just need to be re-worded? "Web unit or authored components are set to receive focus (priority) in an order that follows relationships and sequences in the content"? LGR, 07 Aug: sent a request for clarification 08 Aug: Response from commenter: 1. The comment you quoted ... >Al, you submitted the following comment, and we aren't sure what >part of the document you are suggesting should be replaced with a >narrower provision. Could you clarify? <quote cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/complete.html#navigation-mechanisms"> 2.4.6 When a Web unit or authored component is navigated sequentially, components receive focus in an order that follows relationships and sequences in the content. </quote> 2. Second thoughts, or "compare with the following ideas." The problem in my reading of the existing language is that "when the content is navigated sequentially" is not defined, just based on the content. Consider Opera, where there are many sequential-navigation modes, each with its own proper sense of sequence and inclusion/exclusion in the set of navigation destinations. But maybe when you said 'sequentially' you meant to say "in content order." That's a different statement and the fix I proposed in my comment doesn't capture that good idea. So... There is a best practice that you may have meant to indicate, and I have to say that PF would support assertions in this direction. This is that the content, when presented in the order it appears in the "file on the wire" -- the form in which it is passed from author's automation to user's automation (textual order in the HTML source for HTML) -- in that order the content should make sense. This should be a *reasonable* reading order; without assuming that there is *one, right* reading order for the content of a page. [I'm making this too technical. Aaron's post gives the gist of the argument: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-wai-pf/2006AprJun/0184 ] .. so, another way to clean up this success criterion, if this is what you mean, would be to say something along the lines of: "When content is presented in the order in which it appears in the _content encoding_, a logical reading order is achieved." Note: _content encoding_ is marked to indicate a glossarized term. [Leading back to the "two interfaces" discussion. Or use a term out of what IBM submitted concerning how to talk about the DOM -- I haven't read that yet. Al LGR, 18 Aug: I'm not comfortable with "content order" (besides introducing yet one more technical concept), because there may be relationships expressed in the content that support tab orders that aren't "in content order", e.g., tabbing through tables by column rather than by row. Discussed in the 11 January 2007 telecon: Resolution: accept 974 as amended http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/01/11-wai-wcag-minutes.html DONE Define "navigated sequentially " as "navigated in the order defined for advancing focus from one element to the next with the keyboard". {accept} DONE Add new paragraph to Intent of 2.4.6 The way that sequential navigation order is determined in web content is defined by the technology of the content. For example, simple HTML defines sequential navigation via the notion of tabbing order. Dynamic HTML may modify the navigation sequence using scripting along with the addition of a tabindex attribute to allow focus to additional elements. In this case the navigation should follow relationships and sequences in the content If no scripting or tabindex attributes are used, the navigation order is the order that compoents appear in the content stream. (See HTML 4.01 Specification, section 17.11, "Giving focus to an element" http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.11). XML source updated 19 January 2007; Resolution: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have added the following definition for the term "sequentially navigated": navigated sequentially navigated in the order defined for advancing focus from one element to the next with the keyboard. We have also added the following explanation to the Intent Section of SC 2.4.6: The way that sequential navigation order is determined in Web content is defined by the technology of the content. For example, simple HTML defines sequential navigation via the notion of tabbing order. Dynamic HTML may modify the navigation sequence using scripting along with the addition of a tabindex attribute to allow focus to additional elements. In this case, the navigation should follow relationships and sequences in the content. If no scripting or tabindex attributes are used, the navigation order is the order that components appear in the content stream. (See HTML 4.01 Specification, section 17.11, "Giving focus to an element").; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)