[orca-list] Navigation on desktop icon view: Which is appropriate(Right arrow/Down Arrow)?

[Leena Chourey <leenagour gmail com>]

Dear Members,

As a research project we are working on the navigation related issues on Desktop icon view and we found following issues & bugs related with

• Issues: (Completeness) to visit all icons, generally the user starts with top icon of first column by pressing Home. Then he presses down arrow key to traverse all icons of current column. When he reaches the bottom, he either goes back to top icon, moves left to top icon in second column, then moves down to last icon in the column. Or he presses right arrow key to move to bottom icon of second column, then moves up to top icon of the column. Proceed to next column if any and stop when the last icon is reached. In absence of visual feedback it is very confusing with item repetitions, and with different arrow key directions. And important is, that there are chances to miss/skip some icons on desktop, means incompleteness. It is not sure that user has visited all item available on desktop. Bug613111
  

          For the same, we have explored and concluded that there should be an easy way to navigate through icons
on desktop for traversing (with completeness) or searching. There should be connectivity between previous row/column and next row/column for the completeness. Means to traverse all icon with single direction (either down arrow or right arrow) focus should move from one row/column to next row/column. As I understands, for a visually impaired user there is nothing like rows and columns, they will refer just pre/next items on desktop. Now the query is, which direction (top-->bottom or left--> right)will be appropriate or should be chosen to work on same issue? Is there any reason to give preference to use LTR (Left To Right) than TTB(Top To Bottom)? It would be better if some statistics or research results are available to justify the choice.  

Your suggestions and feedback are welcome to discuss.

With regards
Leena