Re: [office] Table Refresh Delay

[Duane Nickull <dnickull@adobe.com>]

Title: Re: [office] Table Refresh Delay

But do we, the standards org, have to worry about this?  There are hundreds of technologies that could be used to try and induce a physical response in a human.  Surely we are responsible for putting out a good spec only, not liable for something that may happen based on how people use the spec.  If you tried to sue someone for that in Canada you’d be thrown out of court on your butt unless you can prove someone deliberately and maliciously plotted by (participating in the specification and putting in features that allow an attack + deliberately authoring some content and showing it to a natural person to induce an attack).

Surely EULA’s cover this.  This TC does not ship anything other than specifications.

Duane



On 18/07/08 3:32 PM, "robert_weir@us.ibm.com" <robert_weir@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> "Warren Turkal" <turkal@google.com> wrote on 07/18/2008 04:29:01 PM:
> > 
> > Does the MPEG4 spec have a similar restriction? It seems to me that
> > allowing quick changes in a video could also cause an epileptic fit.
> > 
>
> I don't know.  Unfortunately even JTC1/SC34 members are not given free access to other ISO standards.  So short of shelling out $70 to buy a copy, I cannot check.  Ironically, if we did want to make a statement on the safety implications of flickering, we are required to do so according to ISO/IEC Guide 51 "Safety aspects -- Guidelines for their inclusion in standards", but that is not available to us free.  That would cost $63. 
>
> But one assumes that there is a risk with  MPEG4 as well.  At the very least you could have a video of an ODF editor doing a table refresh really fast. 
>
> In any case, there is some good background here on the general problem: 
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_element <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_element> 
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosensitive_epilepsy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosensitive_epilepsy> 
>
> Sounds like the risky range is 2 Hz - 55 Hz, which should be avoided according to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act: 
>
> http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12#Web <http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12#Web> 
>
> What I'm not sure is whether "flicker" is the same as update, or is "flicker" just a symptom of poor graphics layer, e.g., cannot update text without first blanking it out.  With double-buffering, XOR'ing images, etc., we should have be able to have flicker-free updates if we wanted.  Your mouse doesn't flicker when you move it around your screen, does it?  That is more than 2Hz. 
>
> -Rob

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