4 ms·
> One of the purposes of a scroll bar is to indicate how long (and/or wide) some piece of content is relative to your window. Another purpose is to indicate you
by chrisseaton 4y ago
> One of the purposes of a scroll bar is to indicate how long (and/or wide) some piece of content is relative to your window. Another purpose is to indicate your current X/Y position within some piece of content.
Seems fine to me? New content is appended, so the length and your position changes. Scroll bar reflects what’s going on. What’s the problem?
- lelandfe 4y agoYeah, I'll bite. How is a growing scrollbar bad for accessibility? Why is an understanding of how long a page is an accessibility concern?
- Dalewyn 4y agoBecause not everyone has the hand-eye coordination and/or motor skills to keep track of an arbitrarily changing scroll bar, particularly the elderly and the disabled. An accurate and consistent scroll bar is a valuable navigation tool, please don't break it.
- chrisseaton 4y agoWhy do you need to coordinate your hand and eye to use a scroll bar? Don’t you use touch to scroll or a scroll wheel?
- Dalewyn 4y agoClicking/touching the scroll bar and dragging it directly is a valid way of using a scroll bar. Especially for people who come from a time when mice didn't have scroll wheels, clicking and dragging the scroll bar itself predates the convenience of whole-screen dragging (touch) and flicking the scroll wheel. Dragging the scroll bar has its benefits over touch/wheel too: It allows for quicker, longer distance travel with fewer (and in the sense that you just move your arm, also simpler) movements.
- lelandfe 4y agoHm. Do the the elderly and the disabled keep track of the scroll bar length? Does it getting longer actually confuse people? I'm not convinced this is as important of a thing. Opening modals changes the scrollbar length. Opening accordions do too. The scrollbar doesn't "break" when content is added to a page, it just adjusts accordingly. It seems like this is all good, expected behavior; not an a11y concern.
- Dalewyn 4y agoMost of us take for granted the fact we are all still physically and mentally fit (and also know how to operate computers!). Inevitably though, age will catch up to us one day. Particularly for the elderly and disabled, but honestly pretty much anyone not familiar with using computers, elements of the user interface suddenly changing seemingly at random is extremely disruptive and disorienting. In the spirit of accesibility, as an engineer you want to eliminate such behaviour because being disrupted and disoriented like that is really unpleasant.
- lelandfe 4y ago> eliminate such behaviour because being disrupted and disoriented like that is really unpleasant This appears to be postulation on your part rather than actual knowledge of accessibility needs. The specter of "visually changing things are bad" may hold some water (WCAG requirements do include things along those lines), but in order to discourage folks from using common web components I'd definitely need to see some actual evidence of this phenomenon w.r.t scrolling.
- Dalewyn 4y ago>in order to discourage folks from using common web components I'd definitely need to see some actual evidence of this phenomenon w.r.t scrolling. I mean, this whole thread is rife with people telling stories of being terribly annoyed by the shenanigans that infinite scrolling causes. Including issues both involving the scroll bar as well as other forms of navigation that break down with infinite scrolling. I'm sure you have also experienced moments of disorientation when something you were using (not necessarily infinite scrolling) suddenly decided to do something all on its own and left you to figure out what just happened.