Re: [office] dynamic updates

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Hi Rich,

Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
> Hi Rob,
> 
> Tables now have a dynamic refresh attribute. The specification does not 
> say what the refresh rate metrics are (although I have not looked a the 
> schema yet) and frankly the documentation is a bit thin. However, I 
> believe this means that all data in the table will get refreshed.
> 
> Does this not mean that data in spreadsheets gets refreshed and redrawn 
> based on updates from the server?

I read the description of the attribute that the application simply 
reloads the linked data after the specified amount of time has passed. 
Which means that is is the application that polls for the data.

> 
> So, regarding these asynchronous updates it is our assumption that data 
> will get refreshed visually in tables. This is not a lot different than 
> a web page using AJAX to get data updates from a server and refreshing 
> the UI.
> 
> So, here is the use case for a user who is blind:
> 
> A blind user will operate where they have focus. Data changes may happen 
> in areas of the document outside the current keyboard focus point. We 
> need to tell a screen reader how to convey this information to the user:
> 
>     * Ignore it
>     * notify them immediately - an Alert if the data change is really
>       important (In which case an office application may wish to scroll
>       the effected cells into view.
>     * should the AT process the immediately effected area or the entire
>       area (an entire column of data), etc.

Do you think this should be controllable by the author of the document? 
Or is is sufficient to agree on one of these behaviors and to recommend 
that in the a11y guidelines?

Michael

-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
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