2.4.11 Focus Appearance complexity

[priyankad7]

This Success Criterion is very complicated to understand and to perform testing. It requires too many area and contrast calculations. There have been multiple GitHub issues around this topic, the fact that subject matter experts struggle with understanding this SC even with 18 different images and examples should be a strong indication that the SC needs to be simplified.

[SaraSoueidan]

I don't mean this to be a shameless plug (even though technically it still counts as one), but I have written a guide to understanding the Focus Appearance requirements that might help in the meantime: https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/focus-indicators/

[alastc]

Approved response:

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As referenced in previous comments, there are multiple factors which affect the visibility of a focus indicator, removing any of which would reduce the utility for the target audience.

There is always a balance between complexity, understandability, and design options. Despite multiple attempts no one has been able to suggest a simpler version which meets the requirements. We will continue to work on the understandability.

Keeping the design options open does make it more complex, otherwise we could just use the text from the AAA version. However, that was thought to be too restrictive.

What is relatively easy to convey is how to pass and since your comment we've added another figure at the top of the understanding document to highlight 3 easy ways of creating a passing focus indicator.

[alastc]

The response above was approved by the group: https://www.w3.org/2022/01/11-ag-minutes.html#resolution03