Re: [g-a-devel]Panel Accessibility Questions

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Marc Mulcahy wrote:

> Also, I notice that many applets simply have a button to pop open a dialog
> or the like, which seems fine enough.  But it seems there are some applets
> which have multiple focusable controls in them which are all in the tab
> order.  Wouldn't it make sense that when a user tabs around the panel, each
> thing in the panel is represented by only one item in the focus chain.  To
> activate that item, the user would press enter or space, just as is
> currently the case with applets which are represented by a button?

Hmm, what's happening doesn't sound quite like what I think we had
intended to happen.  

What I thought we'd decided was that each object on the panel *should*
only be represented by one item in the Tab chain, and navigation
*within* any panel object that has multiple controls in it (such as the
tasklist applet) should be done only with arrow keys and enter/space,
rather than Tab, while that object has focus.  Therefore Tab should
always move you on to the next object on the panel, regardless of the
type of panel object that currently has focus.

That was certainly what I thought we'd decided on last time we had a
panel keynav huddle in our cubicle :)  If I've got the wrong end of the
stick, or this solution turned out not to be implementable (since it
would require turning *off* the normal behaviour of Tab when navigating
within an applet, which might be a pain), then I guess we'll have to do
something like Marc suggests.  Or indeed we may want to do that anyway,
if it sounds like it works better than the other solution I just
described.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems