Technique G215:Providing controls to achieve the same result as path based or multipoint gestures

Applicability

Any technology that supports pointer input (e.g., supporting any or all of the following: mouse pointer, touch on touch screen or trackpad, stylus input, or laser pointer input).

This technique relates to 2.5.1: Pointer Gestures (Sufficient).

Description

The objective of this technique is to ensure that users who have difficulties performing path-based gestures can operate a content slider with a single pointer (e.g., a single tap on a touch screen or a single mouse click). A content slider contains chunks of content in a row. Usually several chunks of content are hidden, and only one chunk is visible at any time. Left and right horizontal swiping over the visible part of the slider brings adjacent hidden chunks of content into view. Providing controls (for example, arrow buttons) as alternative means of input allows advancing the slider with single pointer input.

On touch screen devices, author-supplied path-based gestures usually do not work when OS level assistive technologies (AT) like a built-in screenreader are turned on. This is because AT generally consumes a path-based gestures so they would not reach the authored content. For example, a horizontal swipe gesture over the content slider will not work as intended by the author, but move the screen reader focus to the next or previous element. Some gestures may work if the user operates "pass-through gestures" which are often unreliable as they may depend on factors of hardware, operating system, operating system "skin", operating system setting, or user agent.

This technique addresses gestures where support has been implemented by authors, not gestures provided by the user agent (such as horizontal swiping to move through the browser history or vertical swiping to scroll through page content) or the operating system (e.g., gestures to move between open apps, or call up contextual menus of assistive technologies when these are enabled).

Examples

• A content slider allows users to swipe left and right to reveal adjacent chunks of content. There are also next and previous buttons that enable users to advance to the next or previous chunks of content.

Tests