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Re: How important in practice is WCAG Technique G165: Using the default focus indicator for the platform?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Oct 2, 2019 5:45AM

On 02/10/2019 11:58, Mark Magennis wrote:
> One of the Sufficient Techniques for WCAG 2.0 SC 2.4.7 Focus Visible is G165: 'Using the default focus indicator for the platform so that high visibility default focus indicators will carry over'. I can see the logic in the statement "so that high visibility default focus indicators will carry over". But does anyone have any views on how important this is in practice? Do AT (e.g. screen magnification) users often change the default focus indicator in a way that would be used in a browser but overridden by a web page author using their own focus indicator? Do platform controls also do this and how widely used are they? I'd welcome insight from anyone with exposure to a lot of AT users.
>
> I also note that another Sufficient Technique for SC 2.4.7 is G195: 'Using an author-supplied, highly visible focus indicator', and this is also a Sufficient Technique for WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast. In fact, this is its only Sufficient Technique for achieving this with UI components and I can see how relying on the browser default may not be enough given that different UI components may have different colours and may be presented on different coloured backgrounds.
>
> So that would seem to support following G195 rather than G165. Any thoughts?

Sufficient techniques are just suggestions of what an author could do to
pass the SC. They can be mutually exclusive or contradictory. They're
not an exhaustive list of approaches, nor are they necessarily best
practices or strongly recommended. They're quite literally "well, this
will probably suffice to claim you pass" in many cases.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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