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Re: Where do single page applications fail WCAG2?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Feb 10, 2015 6:17AM

On 10/02/2015 12:44, Bim Egan wrote:
> You're right Patrick,
> It does sound as though focus has been lost. It's a common problem in
> single page applications, along with the fact that there's no change in
> page title unless JavaScript has been used to update it.
>
> But I see Lynn's problem, loss of focus or context comes under WCAG2 SC
> 3.2.2 On Input, which says that it covers a change of setting for a form
> control, but does not cover the activation of a link or button. [1]
>
> Single page applications can be made accessible, but can they be deemed to
> fail WCAG2 at Level AA or even Level A? They should, as the loss of focus
> and page title problems are extremely disorientating for blind people. But
> if the overall page has a title and the focus is lost on activating a
> button, what does it fail on?

Indeed, this is one of the situations where WCAG 2 - for all its good
intentions - has a serious gap, requiring sometimes creative
reinterpretation of what an SC covers beyond the letter of the spec. I'd
roughly justify failing something like the above for 2.4.3 Focus Order
by making the argument that if focus is lost due to programmatic
changes, that breaks the navigation sequence/order completely and then
relies on the user agents to error-correct by resetting focus back to
the start of the document on the next interaction. It could also be
argued that it breaks 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence, for the same reason.

But I admit that this could be argued to be my own private interpretation.

Maybe what we need, more than anything, are a few updated failure
examples (and some additional prose in the "Understanding..."
documentation) for 2.4.3/1.3.2 that cover this sort of scenario?

Failing that, the above can pass WCAG 2 but still be inaccessible in
real terms...which yes, can be a problem if a site owner/developer is
merely interested in a pass/fail box-ticking exercise. Happens less with
WCAG 2 than with WCAG 1, but still...

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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