Re: Auto-completion popup?

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Hi Kris:

OK, well I am not very comfortable with this proposal.  It is definitely
an accessibility problem to have popups appearing without a more
explicit user action.  I think on-demand completion is that way to go;
however you are correct in saying that it should not be "TAB".

However word completion can't be something that's accessibility
unfriendly, under the assumption that it's a "convenience" - since it's
a useful feature, a desktop that doesn't provide an
accessibility-friendly way of using it is by definition not fully
accessible.  So turning this off is not, IMO, a good option for us.

So I think we need to reopen this discussion, I do not think the current
one is OK for accessibility.  

best regards,

- Bill

On Sat, 2003-05-24 at 00:24, Kristian Rietveld wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 18:54, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > Hi:
> > 
> > I see that it was suggested that autocompletion use a popup window to
> > display its results, rather than rely on keystrokes to supply direct
> > completion into the entry field.
> 
> Correct. Basically because I got told that the popup-method is better
> usability-wise compared to the select-ahead-method. And such a keystroke
> would probably be tab, which the a11y people don't like because it would
> break keynav.
> 
> > 
> > I have some accessibility concerns about this; in fact this could be
> > pretty awkward for screenreaders since they generally treat new popup
> > windows like dialogs (if they notice them at all).  Is the current plan
> > for the popup to be realized in response to a user keystroke?  If so,
> 
> It would only popup after the user typed some characters, informing the
> user whether there are matching items (and if so, which) or not. After
> that, it would pop down if the entry loses focus, or if the user selects
> an item from the popup.
> 
> > perhaps this would be more predictable behavior from the end-user's
> > point of view.  Any sort of automagic popup windows can be very annoying
> > to sighted users and create very confusing noise for blind users; I'd
> > prefer to see autocompletion on-demand only.
> 
> An on-demand popup would require the use of Tab (which you don't like),
> or a totally awkward keybinding (which nobody is going to like). Also, a
> popup is bad usability wise, as pointed out above (I should figure out
> and write down the argumentation on this).
> 
> So, my conclusion is that the popup-method is the best way to go. And if
> that introduces problems with a11y, I can provide an option (probably a
> theme-setting) to turn it off. This way you would be able to turn
> completion off for the a11y users, which shouldn't introduce problems,
> completion is a convenience, not a necessity.
> 
> 
> 
> 	-Kris
> 
> > 
> > regards,
> > 
> > Bill
> > 
> > 
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