This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 10896 - enable device independent access to event handlers
Summary: enable device independent access to event handlers
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: WebAppsWG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HISTORICAL - DOM3 Events (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P1 major
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Travis Leithead [MSFT]
QA Contact: public-webapps-bugzilla
URL: http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Ac...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11y, a11ytf
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-09-30 20:02 UTC by Léonie Watson
Modified: 2012-08-20 16:29 UTC (History)
10 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Léonie Watson 2010-09-30 20:02:44 UTC
REQUIREMENT EV1: a user must have the ability to obtain the list of input device event handlers explicitly associated with an element in a device independent manner.

    * Explanatory note EV1.1: Users interacting with a web browser may 
      be doing so by voice, keyboard, mouse or another input technology 
      or a combination of any of these. No matter how the user is 
      controlling the user agent, he or she needs to know all the input 
      methods assigned to a particular piece of content.

REQUIREMENT EV2: a user must be able to activate any input device event handlers explicitly associated with an element in a device independent manner.

    * Explanatory note EV2.1: Although it should not be so designed, 
      some Web content is designed to work only with certain input 
      devices, such as a mouse, thereby limiting the availability of 
      those event handlers to specific devices. Some users interacting 
      with a web browser may be doing so by voice, keyboard, mouse or 
      another input technology or a combination of any of these. No 
      matter how the user is controlling the user agent, he or she must 
      be able to activate any of the event handlers regardless of the 
      interaction technology being used.

    * Explanatory note EV2.2: A user who cannot use a mouse needs to 
      activate a flyout menu that normally appears OnMouseOver. The user 
      should be able to navigate to a link and activate it using 
      keyboard shortcuts.

REQUIREMENT EV3: a user must be able to simultaneously activate all input device event handlers explicitly associated with an element in a device-independent manner.

    * Explanatory note EV3.1: One input method should not hold back 
      another. People who don't use a mouse shouldn't necessarily have 
      to map their input methods to the same steps a mouse user would 
      take.

          * Examples:
                + Speech input users may combine moving the mouse up, 
                  left and clicking in a single command phrase.

                + A link has an onmousedown and an onmouseup event 
                  link. The keyboard user should be able to use 1 key 
                  click to activate both events. 

REQUIREMENT EV4: HTML5 must provide a standard way to enumerate the events on a DOM node and a parallel method to use addEventListener and removeEventListener to obtain a collection of "events" or an enumeration function.

    * Explanatory Note 1: This is extremely important for analyzing 
      web applications for identifying keyboard support for widgets.
Comment 1 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-10-02 05:00:23 UTC
Isn't this an issue for DOM Level 3 Events, not HTML5? HTML5 does not define the concept of event handlers, it just uses it.
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-10-07 21:45:07 UTC
Reassigning to DOM Events, since this doesn't seem to be HTML-specific.

Doug: Feel free to reassign back to me if you think this should be dealt with at the HTML level.
Comment 3 Travis Leithead [MSFT] 2012-03-08 21:16:35 UTC
Assigning to myself to take action on these open bugs.
Comment 4 Travis Leithead [MSFT] 2012-03-15 23:23:39 UTC
--DOM3 Events--Last Call Bugs Review--

I'm concerned with adding these Accessiblity APIs (how I understand requirements EV1-4) alongside the other APIs described in this document [DOM3 Events], primarily becuase the conformance criteria for the existing APIs in this spec relate to browsers and script engine interop in particular, and the accessibility APIs for event inspection and dispatch would belong to a whole different conformance criteria.

In short, I wouldn't expect to see the accessibility APIs (if defined herein) available to a browser's scripting engine, nor would I expect them to be testable using the same techniques employed for the APIs already described in this spec.

If accessibility APIs were added to this spec, how would they be tested and verified? 

To me these requirements seem so distinct as to merit a document all their own.

Would love to hear feedback. Have there been new developments since this bug was filed? (This bug was filed just under a year and a half ago.)
Comment 5 Travis Leithead [MSFT] 2012-07-30 23:27:41 UTC
Assigning to me. I've got a mail thread with a representative of a11y WG... who are looking into this again...
Comment 6 Travis Leithead [MSFT] 2012-08-20 16:29:22 UTC
Closing this issue per common consent as recorded here:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-wai-pf/2012JulSep/0095.html

and copied below for those w/out member access:

--------------------
From: Michael Cooper [mailto:cooper@w3.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 8, 2012 1:02 PM
To: Travis Leithead
Cc: 'Doug Schepers'; Adrian Bateman; Janina Sajka; WAI PFWG; WAI Liaison
Subject: Re: WebApps Bug 10896 - enable device independent access to event handlers

Hi Travis - I'm sorry, you didn't miss an official announcement. We sent a Call for Objections to the PF list on 27 June 2012:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-wai-pf/2012AprJun/0212.html

No objections were sent, e.g., see 

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-wai-pf/2012AprJun/

We didn't record a formal resolution in a meeting, but we worked up a formal response in the 27 June 2012 PF meeting (which had low quorum so we didn't record a resolution):

https://www.w3.org/2012/06/27-pf-minutes.html

"In the years since this bug was filed, our view of how to provide accessibility to Web Applications has evolved. The new IndieUI work is expected to meet the user requirements albeit in a different manner than originally proposed in this bug. Requirements that IndieUI would not meet are ones that we no longer believe need to be met. Therefore we now believe there is nothing needed in DOM Level 3 Events. We appreciated your thoroughness in checking this with us and it has helped to clarify our position on accessibility events. You can close this bug without further action."

Based on all the above, you can consider this issue closed from our perspective. I'm copying the PF list and the wai-liaison list to archive this.