Finding help about wcag21 HOT 7 CLOSED

This feedback is based on a collective review by @stevefaulkner @patrickhlauke @jspellman @sarah-horton and @LJWatson

Enabling people to find help easily is important, but it isn't clear exactly how this SC could be met.

What is a "user interaction"? If a single key press constitutes one user interaction, it seems this SC cannot be met for keyboard users?

If user interaction is defined more loosely (two key presses for example), it might be possible to meet this SC but it would be at the risk of negatively impacting usability for keyboard users. It would be necessary to introduce help triggers within one tab stop of every piece of content (where help might
be required). This risks introducing a large number of additional tab stops to the overall document.

The SC seems to allow for a help trigger to be included only in the header and/or footer. This would avoid the risk of additional tab stops, but would
introduce a discoverability problem. People using screen readers and screen magnification may be unaware that either trigger exists - and the act of discovering
them would require many more than a single user interaction.

The intention of this SC is admirable, but we feel it would be difficult to meet it within the framework of WCAG and suggest it is moved to the Silver TF for future consideration.

from wcag21.

Since the problem seems to be the "one user action" I recommend removing that part (admirable though it is, it causes too many problems for keyboard users) and just saying that a prominent link to help content, support page or support function is provided.

Recommended change:
Finding help: Provide help content, support page, or support function that is prominent (e.g. inline instructions in a contrasting color, a link in the footer to a support page with a bright ? symbol, a floating control in the right margin for a chat window). (Level AA)

Definition for Prominent (hopefully used elsewhere)
Prominent: A heuristic measure of how likely users are to notice a user interface component in a user interface that they are operating. Prominence can be measured in comparison with other, similar user interface components. Prominence is affected by numerous factors, including: the number of navigation steps required, the reading order position, and visual properties (e.g. size, spacing, color). [re-phrasing of the ATAG definition]

from wcag21.

We also had "one user action" come up in a conversation around the glossary definition of help in another SC and removed it there as well earlier.

from wcag21.

I really don't like this change at all, because I think that "Prominent" is way too subjective and untestable.

We really need to get this fixed as I think that there may be many SCs (see below) where we want to require that vital functionality that needs to be easily and quickly accessed should not be hidden as a buried menu item.

Maybe "one user action" may need careful definition to make it clear that performing that intentional action may require multiple lower-level actions,

I've proposed the following for #48:
Glossary entries:

• easily available (or easily available mode or setting): can be accessed in all contexts by one user action
• user action: the intentional interaction taken by the user to manipulate the content of the page.

A more precise concept that was used in Europe for EN 301 549 (our Section 508 equivalent), and that was accepted by industry, disability bodies and those procuring ICT. It said that controls to activate/de-activate captions:

• "shall be provided to the user at the same level of interaction (i.e. the number of steps to complete the task) as the primary media controls."

so maybe some variant of that could be used?

from wcag21.

+1 to MG.

from wcag21.

Hi Mike, I agree that this is a bear to define. ATAG worked on it for many months before coming up with Prominent. It is testable -- possibly even able to be automatically tested -- because it is a iterative comparison with the other controls or components on the site. Actually, it is more flexible than EN 301 because "prominent" also allows visual highlighting. However, I'm ok with the EN 301 definition (I'm always in favor of harmonization). How about "easily available: controls or information provided to the user at the same level of interaction (i.e. the number of steps to complete the task) as the secondary navigation or equivalent." -- I'm ok with putting at primary navigation level, but I think secondary will have better acceptance.

from wcag21.

I just quickly checked the ATAG usage and I think their definition works well in the "at least as prominent" usage. I think there might be some posay something say something similar here, but I'm not in a good place at the moment to propose a perfect solution (waiting in a busy hospital outpatients area - luckily I'm not the patient).

from wcag21.