Thread Subject: Re: Group A: 21(c) Keyboard focus

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Tue, Oct 31 2006 6:40 AM

"[Don Barret wrote] The whole notion of programmatically exposed has always
proven to be a real problem in 508 implementation and testing. At least to
my knowledge, it isn't testable or measurable and without those qualities,
any standard is worthless. Remember, we are not designing a utopia nor are
we defining what the perfect world of accessibility would look like in web
and software. We are refreshing a Federal standard which must be
reasonable, meetable, measurable, and understandable.

[my comments] Testing for programmatic focus is very testable. Programmatic
focus can be exposed through several means. Depending on the type of
software and the platform different means can be used to verify programmatic
focus is being exposed. For example, in a win32 application focus is
exposed through standard APIs such as setFocus and drawFocusRect. In an
MSAA application focus is exposed through events and states. In JAVA focus
is exposed through events and states that are fed through the access bridge.
On web pages methods such as focus() are used and translated by the browser
into MSAA and API level programmatic focus.

"[Don Barret wrote ] What are standard input/output services? Does that
mean using only MFC controls? Does it mean only using OS calls? If we can
define these, I think they re very very relevant, but the phrase itself is
just too generic."

[my comments] I'm also concerned about the term input. While all people
may realize an edit field is an input control, some people might not assume
a button is also an input control. I prefer the term interactive components
to input.

Jonathan

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