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Re: Firefox, about:cofig: "Browse with caret" required for accessibility?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Jul 19, 2018 11:31AM


On 19/07/2018 17:47, Mallory wrote:
> Ah, if that's the question, it's a good one. And it sounds like something that, if it's not a failure, could be turned into one (as single-character-key shortcuts did).

However, how do you square that circle with things like ARIA patterns?
If the pattern demands that, for instance, cursor keys are used to
navigate up/down in a menu, then failing can't really fail this sort of
thing if it has weird side effects when caret browsing is
enabled...unless you'd expect a site to offer two separate modes of
navigation through menus (one just in case a caret browsing user tries
to use the menu as well)?

P

> cheers,
> _mallory
>
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2018, at 12:23 PM, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
>> On 19/07/2018 10:42, Mallory wrote:
>>> Why not let users turn it on and off as needed with f7? People who use caret nav experience right off the bat that it's generally not on by default. People who need it for stuff like text selection have to learn somewhere which browsers can even do it and how to turn it on.
>>
>> But I think the core question here was: if a site doesn't work when
>> caret browsing is on, is that a failure (of WCAG in general, or more
>> generally of accessibility).
>>
>> If a site relies in some way on cursor key use, and caret browsing
>> "steals" the cursor keys (or perhaps even worse, moves the caret BUT
>> also passes on the keypress to the page which then triggers JS there),
>> there's going to be problems. When AT is running, AT will disambiguate
>> whether it needs to react to cursor keys itself (by moving the
>> reading/accessibility focus) OR just pass on the keystroke to the page
>> (e.g. when inside a proper role="menu")...but I suspect pure caret
>> browsing without AT doesn't do anything clever like that, so things will
>> get funky. Whose fault is it? The browser's, the author's? I tend to
>> think it's the browser's, in this case...
>>
>>> I only turn it on when I want to do specific things because otherwise, at least on this machine (Ubuntu on a Thinkpad) it messes with page scrolling.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Mallory
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 17, 2018, at 11:00 PM, glen walker wrote:
>>>> I agree with Patrick. Additionally, anytime you turn on or off some
>>>> feature that is useful for one person but problematic for another, you get
>>>> into a lose-lose situation. It's best left for the user to decide if they
>>>> want that feature on or off.
>>>>
>>>> Glen
>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick H. Lauke
>>
>> www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
>> http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
>> twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke
>> >> >> >> > > > > >


--
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke