Re: Fw: [office-accessibility] Re: [office] Table Refresh Delay

[Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>]

Rob, Dave,

I don't believe the TC is ignoring accessibility - just weighing technical requirements for all users. Frankly the likelihood of a refresh delay of greater than 3 seconds is impractical in real life. Most users won't process anything that fast. But, it is what it is.

My suggestion would be to be to take an excerpt from our ODF accessibility Guidelines for 1.2 and place it in the ODF guidelines in the section on Table Refresh Delay. Something on the order that Office applications SHOULD provide a facility to enable the user to limit table refresh delays to no more than three times per second. Failure to do so may cause seizures in some ODF users.

We could make this a MUST but I don't know of all uses for ODF documents. Additionally, we should provide guidance to ODF content authors which would be in line with this W3C WCAG requirement.

Make sense?

Rich



Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer
Robert Weir/Cambridge/IBM@Lotus

Robert Weir/Cambridge/IBM@Lotus

07/19/08 09:32 AM

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Subject	Fw: [office-accessibility] Re: [office] Table Refresh Delay

"Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote on 07/19/2008 02:00:50 AM:

> 2008/7/18 Peter Korn <Peter.Korn@sun.com>:
> > Hi Dave,
> >
> > In OpenOffice.org we have the ability to turn animation off.  I agree with
> > Malte; we shouldn't prevent the expression of fast animation for those who
> > want it, but we should enable users to not have it displayed to them.
>
>
> Table refresh isn't animation Peter.
>
> I'm more in favour of accessibility than Sun commercial interests.
>

Please, let's all refrain from questioning the motives of other colleagues on the TC.  

The question we have is:

1) What is the risk?
2) What are the possible ways to mitigate the risk?
3) What method or combination of methods reduces the risk to acceptable levels?

It seems to me that an application-level setting to disable animation or other sources of flicker is one way to mitigate the risk, and should be considered.

-Rob