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Thread: "Click anywhere to close"

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From: Whitney Quesenbery
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2014 10:12AM
Subject: "Click anywhere to close"
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I was asked a question about whether the following interaction is
accessible. I don't know much about the context, or how it's coded, so
could we assume (for the sake of argument) that the coding is exemplary.

A link on a page opens a small overlay-style popup window that displays
textual information.

There is a Close link on the overlay which returns the cursor to the same
location. It's got appropriate keyboard support, and the

One of the designers would like users to be able to click anywhere outside
of the overlay area as an alternative to clicking on the Close link.

What say you all?

From: Don Mauck
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2014 10:24AM
Subject: Re: "Click anywhere to close"
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If it is truly a pop-up, I don't think you should be able to cursor out of that pop-up, you need to close it first.
-----Original Message-----
From: Whitney Quesenbery [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 10:13 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] "Click anywhere to close"

I was asked a question about whether the following interaction is accessible. I don't know much about the context, or how it's coded, so could we assume (for the sake of argument) that the coding is exemplary.

A link on a page opens a small overlay-style popup window that displays textual information.

There is a Close link on the overlay which returns the cursor to the same location. It's got appropriate keyboard support, and the

One of the designers would like users to be able to click anywhere outside of the overlay area as an alternative to clicking on the Close link.

What say you all?

From: Denis Boudreau
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2014 10:29AM
Subject: Re: "Click anywhere to close"
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Hi Whitney,

If an "alternative to clicking on the Close link" means the close link is available regardless of the fact that the user can click anywhere to close the overlay, I wouldn’t see any issue with that, but we’d need both. If clicking anywhere was offered instead of a close link, then I would have a problem with the behaviour as some users might not necessarily realize that this is their option to get rid of the overlay.

There really isn’t a crystal clear success criterion in WCAG that applies on something like this, though one could argue that 3.2.3 and 3.2.4 would be great places to start.

Of course, I’m also assuming we’re in agreement that whatever behaviour is determined for the mouse would also work with the keyboard… so pressing the escape key would also close the overlay, regardless of where the keyboard focus is… just like activating the close link on focus would do the same.

/Denis


On Apr 30, 2014, at 12:12 PM, Whitney Quesenbery < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> I was asked a question about whether the following interaction is
> accessible. I don't know much about the context, or how it's coded, so
> could we assume (for the sake of argument) that the coding is exemplary.
>
> A link on a page opens a small overlay-style popup window that displays
> textual information.
>
> There is a Close link on the overlay which returns the cursor to the same
> location. It's got appropriate keyboard support, and the
>
> One of the designers would like users to be able to click anywhere outside
> of the overlay area as an alternative to clicking on the Close link.
>
> What say you all?
> > >