Re: panel prelight on focus

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman sun com>]

Seth said:

>Why is it non-negotiable? Lets say that there was no mechanism for
>indicating visual focus that did not disturb "normal" users. In that
>case, I would say we should not indicate visual focus for the panel
>itself. Its wrong to sacrifice usability of the majority for usability
>of a small minority.
>
>When a small minority wants a feature that's bad for the majority we
>generally consider it a crack feature [1]. I don't see why we should
>treat the situation any differently just because the minority in this
>case happens to be disabled.

I don't think this is such a small minority.  Include users with RSI, 
for instance...

>But this is all very theoretical, since I'm pretty sure we can find a
>solution that does not necessitate comprimising usability as
>accessibility for general usability.
>
>Can somebody make a shot of how it would look to draw the dotted-line
>borders around the panel to indicate focus? I have trouble believing
>that's not sufficiently visible. How is it any different for the panel
>than for, say, a button? 

WHen a button has focus the surrounding window also has
focus indication (via the border color, from the window
manager).  This is not the case with panels.

>-Seth
>
>[1] The situation is a little different when it makes it totally
>unusable for that minority, but I don't think that is the case here.
>There are solutions for panel accesibility that, while not as desirable,
>do not require visually indicating focus of the panel itself. For
>example, it has been suggested over and over that the first object on
>the panel be focused instead of the panel. So it makes it much harder to
>use for this minority, and perhaps they lose a few GNOME features, yes,

there are legal requirements in some situations that specifically
make this unacceptable, i.e. *all* features must be available to
disabled users with exceptions only for things like "blind user's ability
to draw with a paint program".  These legal requirements are expected to become
more and more widely adopted in the next 2 to three years.

-Bill


>but it does not severely comprimise GNOME. I expect many non-technical
>users wouldn't even discover/use the panel right click menu (which is
>the main motivation I can think of for focusing the panel itself).
>

------
Bill Haneman x19279
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland