[g-a-devel] Extensible states (or properties)

[Aaron Leventhal <aaron moonset net>]

One thing that has come out in the working group for DHTML accessibility 
is the need for extensible states.

Some sample use cases:

_Email:
_An email message may be marked with states such as "Junk", "Flagged for 
follow up", "Unread"

_IM client:_
A buddy in a buddy list can have one of the states: idle, away, do not 
disturb, etc. These may not be boolean as there may be a status string 
such as "Idle for 33 minutes" or "Away: at lunch"

_Calendar:
_A schedule item make have a state: conflicting, repeating, tentative, etc.

We can try to expand the states table to contain all of these use cases, 
but I don't think we can ever name all of the useful potential states or 
properties. At the moment people stuff this information into a tooltip 
or accessible name, which isn't a good long term solution. UI Automation 
will provide a localized statusString which will provide this info, but 
that is not semantic -- it would not allow the toggling of these states 
via on onscreen keyboard. On the other hand, it is a practical, simple 
solution which gets most of what's needed.

What will ATK provide?

- Aaron