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Re: Focus should always be set somewhere, right?

for

From: Robert Fentress
Date: Feb 1, 2016 1:09PM

Aaron, your argument that the user is likely to remember the previous item
makes sense. However, on Windows 8 at least, if you are in "Details" view
in File Explorer, deleting an item causes the next item in the list to
receive focus, not the previous. I'd tend towards following the
interaction pattern that is closest to the one the user would experience at
the system level (crossing my fingers that this is the same on Mac and
popular Linux desktops).

But that is only one example of where the best place to set focus is not
totally clear. For instance, suppose you have a discussion forum and you
are on the index page where all of the different topics are listed. These
topics are grouped as follows: "Pinned Discussions", "Discussions". Beside
each topic name in "Discussions" is a button that says "Pin". Clicking the
"Pin" button causes the page to dynamically change, such that the topic is
moved to the "Pinned Discussions" group. Where should focus go in that
instance? Should it stay on the "Pin" button (which now says "Unpin"), or
should it go to the next or previous topic in the "Discussions" list?
Should events like these be accompanied by a polite live region
announcement, or would that be too verbose?

Also, sometimes, what might be considered most usable for one set of users
might make it less accessible for another. For instance, suppose you have
a button that says "New Widget" which causes a form to appear on another
region on the page. Keyboarders would likely greatly appreciate having
focus moved to the first field in that form. However, screen reader users
or those using screen magnification might find this disorienting.

Right now, it all seems very ad hoc. Anybody know of any standards beyond
the patterns described in the ARIA Authoring Practices document (
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/), which is still in draft, I
think, and not prescriptive? Any books, articles, or papers that explore
this issue of focus management in depth, if not specifically for web
applications, then for user interfaces in general? Sarah, user testing is
great, if you can afford it, but it seems like more detailed guidance would
help developers who can't.

Or are we approaching things in the wrong way to try to closely hew to the
paradigm of the desktop? The web frees us from those constraints in a way,
for good or ill. There may be new paradigms that are more usable that what
is currently on tap that are just waiting to be discovered. We all have to
adapt to new ways of doing things as technology enables new possibilities,
but how do you make sure everybody is able to come along for the ride.
Chicken? Egg?

Best,
Rob

On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Aaron Cannon < <EMAIL REMOVED>
> wrote:

> I think being put on the previous item makes more sense, since it is
> more likely, IMHO, that the user would remember the previous item,
> rather than remembering the count of items. They could then
> (hopefully) see from the context that the item had been deleted.
> Also, if the list is huge, I can imagine a KB user getting quite
> annoyed by being sent back to the start of the list.
>
> The only instance I think it makes sense to send the user to the next
> item is if it was the first item which was deleted.
>
> Aaron
>
> On 2/1/16, Bourne, Sarah (ITD) < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> > In the use case you described, a keyboard-only user would probably want
> to
> > be put on the next item. But it might be better for screen reader users
> to
> > be put at the beginning of the list, where they would be told "list of
> [x-1]
> > items" as an affirmation that the item was deleted, or maybe on the
> previous
> > list item. I can't imagine either being pleased with being put back at
> the
> > top of the page. This is where some user testing would be valuable, or
> at
> > least an analysis of what kinds of tasks are being worked on and what
> would
> > be a logical next step in a workflow.
> >
> > sb
> > Sarah E. Bourne
> > Director of IT Accessibility, MassIT
> > Commonwealth of Massachusetts
> > 1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
> > 617-626-4502
> > <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > http://www.mass.gov/MassIT
> >
> >