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Re: Instructions for Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Jan 10, 2020 3:14PM

As a senior member of the Deque Team...

Peter, the Understanding Document for SC 3.3.2 at:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/labels-or-instructions.html
states:

The intent of this Success Criterion is not to clutter the page with
unnecessary information but to provide important cues and instructions that
will benefit people with disabilities. ... The goal is to make certain
that enough
information is provided for the user to accomplish the task without undue
confusion or navigation.


Today the discoverability of custom key-board shortcuts (with or without
the use of @accesskey) is a serious concern - effectively, they cannot be
'discovered' by the user short of code-inspection. Failing to provide
information (instructions) related to using those shortcuts means the
important cues and sufficient information to "...benefit people with
disabilities." required by SC 3.3.2 cannot be discovered, and so those
users cannot subsequently accomplish the task (where, you could argue, the
task is to fire a custom key-stroke event).

Yes, this is interpretive from within Deque, and / but is based upon
internal discussion and the application of 'logic' (as you previously
note). Additionally, because we have multiple evaluators within our team,
it is (was) important that we internally all use the same interpretations
of WCAG across our team (and as you note, this appears to be a gap).

So... Deque's interpretation / recommendation is based on experience,
expertise and logic. HOWEVER it is "non-normative" per the W3C (i.e. not
official), and so it could just as easily be argued in court that our
interpretation is overly strict (if you wanted to). But to date, we've not
gone there, as whenever this comes up, most people understand the logic
argument you initially surfaced and agree with the assertion.

HTH

JF
--
*John Foliot* | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 12:35 PM Peter Quale < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Wondering if anyone can help justify a requirement.
>
> In my mind, if a web application requires a custom keyboard shortcut or has
> non-standard keyboard interactions, instructions are required. I'm not
> finding any WCAG success or failure examples that match what I'm looking
> for.
>
> I did find a Deque University
> <https://dequeuniversity.com/checklists/web/device-independent-input> page
> that claims this is covered by 3.3.2. Quote: "Custom Keystroke
> Instructions: When custom keyboard behavior is required to use a component,
> keyboard instructions MUST be provided."
>
> Would anyone know where the Deque team finds this correlation with 3.3.2,
> other than logic says so.
>
> We're in one of those delightful situations where the developer won't budge
> unless they read it themselves. So, short of hacking the W3C site and
> adding my own success technique, I'm looking for official documentation.
>
> Thanks so much for any assistance!
>
> -Peter Q
>
> --
> *Peter Quale*
> Google Voice: (707) 992-5696
> > > > >

<http://deque.com/>;