Re: CfC: Close ISSUE-134 tab-states by Amicable Resolution

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com> wrote:
>> If no objections are raised to this call by July 12th 2011, we will direct the editor to make the proposed change.
>
> At this time, we find that we have consensus on the following proposal for ISSUE-134:
>
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/tablist_and_tab_states_for_menu_and_command_elements
>
> Bug 10831 will be REOPENED and marked as WGDecision.  Once the editor has made the change, ISSUE-134 will be CLOSED.

Apologies for the late reply on this, but I must object.  The proposal
as stated on the wiki is inconsistent and does not solve the problem
it purports to try to solve.

1. The "Details" part specifies that "User agents must manage focus
for the tab controls by ensuring that only the selected tab is
focusable, and that the remaining tabs in the tablist menu are not
focusable.".  However, the "Risks" section states without such an
element, developers might make "only the selected tab in each
tablist... focusable, meaning that the remaining tabs from each
tablist will not be available or accessible to assistive
technologies.".  Is this a good or bad thing?

2. In "Details", "tabpanel" is listed as a state for <command>
elements, but later text seems to suggest that it should be an
attribute on <command> elements that takes an IDREF.

3. The CP doesn't indicate what the proposed changes should *do*.  The
intention is clearly to make it easier to do cardstacks, where you
have a list of tabs associated with cards, and only one card is
visible at a time (and its tab is specially indicated in the tablist).
 But nothing like that is specified anywhere.  It appears that authors
would still need to use script to create this kind of UI.

4. This is fundamentally a CSS issue.  I've thought about this exact
problem before, and while I suspect there *may* be something we need
to do at the host-language level to connect tabs to cards, that
conclusion should only come after some research has been put into the
problem by the CSS Working Group.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 13 July 2011 22:16:46 UTC