Thread Subject: Group A: 21(b) Interference with accessibilityfeatures

Note

This archival content is maintained by WebAIM and NCDAE on behalf of TEITAC and the U.S. Access Board . Additional details on the updates to section 508 and section 255 can be found at the Access Board web site.

From: Andi Snow-Weaver
Date: Thu, Oct 19 2006 9:20 AM

Current Section 508 wording:

21(b) Applications shall not disrupt or disable activated features of other
products that are identified as accessibility features, where those
features are developed and documented according to industry standards.
Applications also shall not disrupt or disable activated features of any
operating system that are identified as accessibility features where the
application programming interface for those accessibility features has been
documented by the manufacturer of the operating system and is available to
the product developer.

In ISO 9241 Part 171, this is addressed as:

Software shall not disable or interfere with the accessibility features of
the operating system and software that provide services for use by other
software or any other applications.

The ISO spec also includes a provision for accessibility shortcut key
assignments, specifically five consecutive clicks of the shift key and
holding the shift key down for 8 seconds. It also notes that platform
software may reserve additional shortcut keys.

My view (not speaking as co-chair here) is that reserving the shortcut key
assignments is already required by the current 508 provision and the first
ISO one above. If you use the shortcut keys that are being used to activate
accessibility features, you are interfering with them.

Andi

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