Re: New default theme

[Peter Korn <peter korn sun com>]

Greetings,

> >The red suggestion is, more or less, a joke. The trouble with adding
> >a dotted line indication is:
> >
> > a) It uses quite a bit of space (you need to reserve 4 extra
> >    pixels horizontally and vertically
> >
> > b) It looks rather odd and clutters up where you are typing.
> 
> (a) I agree with.  Not so sure about (b) :-)
> 
> >Since both Windows and the Swing use the cursor as the only indication
> >of focus, there is some experimental evidence that it isn't that
> >hard to notice.
> 
> OK, fair enough.

I'm pretty sure that the "visual indication of focus" requirement *is* satisfied
by the fact that there is a blinking caret in the editable text field.  See
specifically the Electronic and Information Technology Standards for Section
508, § 1194.21(c) at:

  http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/508standards.htm

which says:

  (c) A well-defined on-screen indication of the current focus shall be
      provided that moves among interactive interface elements as the input
      focus changes. The focus shall be programmatically exposed so that
      assistive technology can track focus and focus changes.

I would call a blinking vertical bar caret at the place within which the user
can enter text within the text-edit field "well-defined".

A perhaps more interesting question is if/when we allow focus to go to
non-editable text-edit fields (say for a screen reader user to use arrow keys to
move a non-visible caret around in order to get caret signals and retrieve the
line the caret it on to speak/Braille it...  Since the language says "...as the
input focus changes" and non-editable text fields don't accept input, one could
argue that no "on-screen indication" is needed in this instance.


Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team