What Are Dragging Movements (WCAG 2.5.7)?
Summary
Dragging actions must have an alternative method that does not require precise mouse movements.
Overview
In practice this criterion requires that people be never forced to re-order or move things around by mouse-dragging only. There needs to be an alternative way.
The criterion aims to help users who can use a mouse, but do not have the fine motor control to hold down the mouse button while moving the mouse or users who are using mouse emulating assistive technology, like eye-tracking software, where dragging motion may be hard to achieve. These are only a couple of examples. There exists a myriad of these types of tools.
Example
Imagine, you are working on something that requires the user to drag an item. For instance, a slider control. While most sliders have support for clicking somewhere on the line to move the bullet, it can be difficult to hit the exact value. Especially if the slider covers a broad range of numbers, let us say, 1 to 100. Hitting 32 on such a slider would be tricky. In this case, we can satisfy the criterion by adding a simple “minus” and “plus” button. Or better yet an input field to add the preferred value.
Another common example that could fail this criterion would be a list of items that can be re-arranged with drag and drop. You must ensure that you support moving the items with a single click.
Additional Information
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