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

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Oct 2, 2019 9:43PM

The way I think of 2.4.7 is that if you leave the focus indicator
style to the user agent, you are not responsible for its visibility,
if you go with user agent default settings it's the user agent's
problem so to speak.
The minute you override user agent defaults you become responsible for
ensuring that your implementation is WCAG conformant across the board.
Rolling your own is good if you want consistency with your brand, your
site, across user agents, going with user agent defaults is good if
you don't want to worry about WCAG and think that providing a custom
indicator could confuse people who are used to a certain user agent.



On 10/2/19, Mark Magennis < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> You're right Patrick. The WCAG thing was a bit of a red herring and the
> question is really about whether defining a focus indicator will adversely
> affect users who define their own. It just arose within the context of a
> discussion on those WCAG suggested techniques.
>
> Mark Magennis
> Skillsoft | mobile: +353 87 60 60 162
> Accessibility Specialist
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> Patrick H. Lauke
> Sent: 02 October 2019 12:58
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How important in practice is WCAG
> Technique G165: Using the default focus indicator for the platform?
>
> On 02/10/2019 12:51, Mark Magennis wrote:
>> Given that these two techniques are contradictory, which would be your
>> preferred approach? What I'm really getting at is how important is the
>> "high visibility default focus indicators will carry over" consideration?
>
> My personal preference when building my own stuff would be to ensure my
> own author-supplied focus indicator. Normatively the focus visible SC
> doesn't say what "visible" actually means, so in theory just for that SC
> it could be a single faint extra pixel that appears on focus and you
> could claim it be a pass. The new 1.4.11 non-text contrast SC will then
> force you to (probably, if there's no other indicator) make sure that
> single pixel has at least a contrast of 3:1, but that's about it.
>
> So purely within the realm of compliance to WCAG, that's about it.
> Anything beyond that is more usability...
>
> (sorry, I know I'm still not answering your core question - which
> leaving WCAG completely aside, is more about "this high visibility
> platform indicator...is it a thing? is it common?" because I don't have
> an immediate answer here - particularly since browers all do their own
> thing anyway, and don't necessarily follow platform conventions or
> settings in many cases, and if there's AT involved, THAT may force an
> additional focus indicator anyway making it irrelevant what the platform
> or the page actually does :) )
>
> P
> --
> 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
> > > > > > > > >


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