Re: What is focus?

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 13:40, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:

> What exactly is the purpose of the "focus" for accessibility, as compared to
> the selection. 

There's probably a better definition somewhere, but basically focus
always shows you where your next keyboard input will go, whereas a
selection shows you what objects one or more subsequent actions might
affect.

> For instance, in a TreeView (for instance Nautilus), I can
> select an item, or I can move the focus to an item while the selection does
> not move. Is that just a way to read the other items before I've decided
> whether I want to actually select it?

Not really, that's more of a side effect... it becomes important if
you're doing a multiple discontiguous selection, for example, where you
need to be able to target the next item you want to select before you
select it, and without disturbing the current selection.

> Would it be the focused thing that
> would show up on a braile display, for instance?

I would imagine so, but I don't know (I'm sure others will)... in the
meantime why not run the braille monitor that comes with gnopernicus and
see for yourself? :o)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems