However, the WAI is not as forgiving and this is a device-dependent attribute, where redundant input methods are required for the same element. There are five instances where WAI gives us no choice but to use redundancy:
I find it interesting how you refer to WAI as unforgiving and leaving you no choice. Of course, accessibility is not the rote mastery of a set of guidelines, but also involves a level of judgement.
If you try and validate anything towards the standards at Bobby (which is the measurement my clients in the public sector uses) there is no way you can get around the redundancy, if you only do onclick it gives you an error at level 2, that is what I mean with unforgiving. (I am in the US btw, and governmental bodies here needs to see that the pages are validating with Watchfire tools)
Thanks for the long and exhaustive rundown of what WAI is, what event handlers are etc...but I think you'll find that I am quite well versed in the subject matter. One thing to note: even people at the W3C agree that onclick is effectively a misnomer of what should really have been called onactivation. There *is* no device independent equivalent: onkeypress is just as device dependent, if not more, as "onclick" - however, onclick is de-facto triggered by a variety of devices, not just mouse buttons. Do a search around the subject of whether or not onclick is to be considered device dependent or device independent, and you'll find that modern thinking on the issue is that onclick *is* device independent. Even on the actual WAI IG list, the subject seems almost unworthy of a prolonged discussion http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2004JanMar/0512.html
Well, from what my tired brain can read, you are saying that there is no device independent equivalent, so that is why WAI validators ask for the redundancy? I couldn't agree more with the people at W3C here, that it is in fact as misnomer, but then why hasn't it been picked up by WAI I wonder?
These are the guidelines I follow, and I have the hopes that the browser market would start to adhere to (or at least attempt to) the standards,
The standard have holes in them. For true device independence, truly independent handlers such as (fpr lack of appropriate terminology) onactivation for onkeypress, and something like onactivatortriggererd for onmousedown/keydown or onactivatorreleased for onmouseup/keyup would be needed. Currently, even some of the "doubled up" event triggers only seem to cover mouse and key/switch activation, and don't cover things like voice...but I digress.
Agreed that it's like a Swiss cheese at points, and pretty solid at others, however it's the best we have to work with at the present time, and as the regulations for some governmental sites here in the US are to at least fulfill WAI AA, if not AAA, I see no other choice for me to continue to use both, even though I would rather not, since the validator crave it because it's in the WAI standards.
But I'm happy to respect that you follow the guidelines, but I must point out that it's not as cut and dry as you may think.
No, indeed it isn't I'm afraid.
If I could only convince people in decision making positions I would stop using it in a heartbeat
Regards
~Veine
Veine K Vikberg http://www.vikberg.net Professional Web Guru
