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Re: The meaning of 'Change of context' in WCAG 2.0

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Aug 4, 2013 3:45PM

Adding an explicit warning to the label, to the effect of:
"selecting an option in this combobox will change the display language
of the page"
should suffice as a warning.
However, I wonder if this is sufficient. It must be so that the
selection only becomes active once user tabs away from the combobox,
not when any item within the combobox receives keyboard focus.
If the onChange event is triggered as soon as the user selects an
option in the combobox, screenreader users and people who use keyboard
simlators may be completely unable to select the appropriate language
at all.
This particularly applies to screenreader users who may be completely
unable to work with the page once the language changes to a language
their screenreader does not support, and they are unable to operate
the page after that.
Whilst it may be hard to pin this down to a particular success
criteria (though I strongly feel that 2.1.1 applies here), this can be
a complete blocker for users of some assistive technologies, rendering
the page completely inaccessible to them.
Once you are stuck with a page in a language you do not understand,
and if you do not have sufficient knowledge to locate the combobox
directly to switch back to a language you can work with, that is a
showstopper.
As an added recommendation in this case I would recommend they make
sure that the back button moves user backs to the page with the
previous language setting.

Cheers
-B
Birkir Gunnarsson
Accessibility Subject Matter Expert | Deque Systems
http://www.deque.com

On 8/4/13, Duff Johnson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> 3.2.2 states that compliance can be achieved by advising the user of the
>> behaviour before using the component. My view is that the Select Language
>> label does not do this because it does not indicate that the language will
>> change immediately.
>
> So, they change the label to reflect the fact of an instant change in the
> language, and then they don't need the button, right?
>
> Seems reasonable.
>
> It's too bad there's no conventional way to indicate that a given
> interactive component (of any type) takes immediate effect. There are plenty
> of instances where it might be desirable to expand/reduce (for example)
> available options based on a combobox selection, checkbox selectionÂ…
> whatever.
>
> Or perhaps there is, and I just don't know it?
>
> Duff.
> > > >