[css-flexbox] PF comment on Flexbox: Advise authors about reordering

Below is a review from the Protocols and Formats Working Group on CSS 3 
Flexbox <http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-css-flexbox-1-20140325/>.

<blockquote>
5.4.1 Reordering and Accessibility

The order property does not affect ordering in non-visual media (such as 
speech). Likewise, order does not affect the default traversal order of 
sequential navigation modes (such as cycling through links, see e.g. 
nav-index [CSS3UI] or tabindex [HTML40]). Authors must use order only 
for visual, not logical, reordering of content; style sheets that use 
order to perform logical reordering are non-conforming.

This is so that non-visual media and non-CSS UAs, which typically 
present content linearly, can rely on a logical source order, while 
order is used to tailor the visual order. (Since visual perception is 
two-dimensional and non-linear, the desired visual order is not always 
logical.)
</blockquote>

The reordering and accessibility section mentions tabindex and 
nav-index. However, it's not quite strong enough on the importance of 
focus order for visual keyboard users.

We suggest to add "authors who change the order using order, 
flex-direction=row-reverse, flex-direction=column-reverse, or flex-flow 
(and ??) must|should adjust the focus order with either nav-index or 
tabindex."

Received on Wednesday, 21 May 2014 16:48:33 UTC