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Re: Accessibility and web applications

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Apr 2, 2014 6:54PM

If sighted users see any type of indication on the page, that
information must be communicated to all end users, including users of
assistive technologies.
Not doing so would be an accessibility violation. The precise manner
of how this information is visually communicated would determine the
applicable WCAG success criteria.

If no user gets such a warning, allowing them to leave a half finished
message or form and lose all their data is a usability issue, not an
accessibility issue, (everyone gets equally screwed, that is also
accessibility, albeit in reverse).

If you start composing an email message in GMail (I prefer the basic
html interface still) and then navigate to a different page in the
middle of your message, you will get an alert dialog.
I would recommend that for any form that user is expected to have put
more than a couple of minutes work into and then leaves (this is my
gut instinct, not a WCAG requirement), the user should definitely
receive a warning.

If the form consists of less than 10 simple form controls that it
would take a user 2 minutes or less to fill in, I think it is the call
of the website author.
If this is just a "username and password" type page, I would find a
message from such a page invasive and would degrade my user experience
of that site.
The WebAIM screen reader survey showed that close to 99% of
correspondants have JavaScript turned on.
It is the default for most browsers, and people would have to really
go out of their way to have a set up where JavaScript is not enabled.
But if the application has those requirements, that is a valid
decision on their part. Just make sure they do not do that because
they believe it would improve the accessibility experience.
hth
-B
Birkir Gunnarsson
Accessibility SME | Deque Systems



On 4/2/14, Don Mauck < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Ok, I thought that users were seeing a message.
>