Teleconference Details

• Scribe: Mike Scott
• What behaviors we want in a grid; group: please send your feedback to the list
• Improve Grid Example(Jon and Hadi)

Minutes WebMail Accessibility Interest Group 02/08/2007

Attendees

• Hadi Rangin
• Mike Scott
• Srinivas Annam
• Julio Chavarria
• Becky Gibson
• Matt Anderson
• Jon Gunderson

  Regrets

  • Don Evans

  Next Meeting

  • Date: 02/15/2007
  • Scribe: Julio Chavarria

  Becky gives her regrets, but can't continue with work group. She will be focusing on implementing accessibility in the Dojo toolkit. Will continue related discussions on wai-xtech@w3.org mailing list.

  How do you tell if focus is on a row?

  Highlighting or other visual effect.

  Do we need to distinguish between focus and selection?

  Some applications (e.g., Outlook) do treat them separately. Selection is typically shown by highlight/background color. Focus is shown by focus rectangle/outline.

  Do we need a checkbox to indicate selection?

  Maybe. Current apps -- Outlook, Yahoo Mail Beta -- don't use a checkbox. The ARIA approach seems to suggest that the "selected" row/state indicator should be adequate & the assistive technology should interpret appropriately. Use of an icon or other visual indicator may be confusing. We should probably allow for either approach (checkbox or not).

  If a row is selected, how do we tell if a cell is focused?

  Selection could be done by background color and focus by border style (and/or contrasting background color).

  What row/cell gets focus when first entering (or re-entering) the grid?

  One opinion: people like to come back to where they were, i.e., the last focused element. Other approach: focus the grid but not a specific row/cell. Another Scenario: focus the selected row, if any.

  Should selection state be maintained when leaving/re-entering the grid?

  Need some way to clearly communicate selection if it is maintained.

  Should first letter navigation (i.e., press J to jump to the first message from Jon) be required?

  Suggestion that is should be limited to the currently focused column. Hadi will add it to the list of desired behaviors.

  Should it wrap (i.e., cycle back to top when bottom is reached)? Dropdown lists and list boxes generally do, but that may not be desirable.

  How would it handle situations where only a sub-set of records is shown?

  Should shift+letter go backwards?

  Should it be possible to copy (Ctrl+C) a row?

  Outlook Windows allows copy of all text displayed in row. Outlook Web does nothing. Mirapoint also (currently) does not allow copying.

  It may be useful, but might be confusing -- would need to distinguish between copying text and copying messages.

  Hadi finds the ability to copy in Eudora useful. It may be particularly useful to screen reader users. We will keep it on the list to discuss.

  What should be read when entering a grid?

  Possibly "labeled by/described by" and table caption. Would we need both? Would it be a problem for a screen reader to read the caption while in forms mode? The ARIA role "grid" could trigger certain behavior of the screen reader. A caption could be the "labeled by/described by" element. To clarify, "labeled by/described by" contain the id (or list of ids) of element(s) on the page. "Labeled by" is meant to be terse; "described by", more extensive. Elements can be hidden using CSS if desired.

  How should context menu (brought up by application key and/or right mouse button) work?

  Bring up a list of possible actions for the focused element.

  Action Items

  • Revise the desired behavior with screen reader and add first letter navigation to the behavior (Hadi)