In current user interface terms a toast is a message that appears on the screen; it is often short, often appears only briefly, and often animates up from the bottom (like a piece of ghostly yet precisely-crafted toast), though other directions and a fade-in/-out is common. The Name When Google…
Here is the priority I follow when assigning an accessible name to a control: Native HTML techniques, aria-labelledby pointing at existing visible text, Visibly-hidden content that is still in the page, aria-label. Too often folks will grab ARIA first to provide an accessible name for a thing. Or they may…
Related A Responsive Accessible Table Hey, It’s Still OK to Use Tables Keyboard and Overflow
Links to files can be a surprise for users, especially those who cannot use, do not notice, or do not have the status bar to show a link destination. Some users may appreciate knowing a link points to a file, sometimes even a particular file. For links with the download…
Typography that responds to viewport width (‘fluid’ or ‘responsive’ typography) can be useful when you want to ensure text does not get clipped or spill out of some design elements. Carousels, widget controls, or my Venn diagram are some examples. I say viewport width because I rarely see responsive type…
Web developers around the world have celebrated Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related topics. As a result, you may recognize some of the ones listed below. Every year I miss a few on day one, so add a comment or tweet me if you have…
I have often remarked that my blog is little more than a place for me to offload my memory. I need not remember the syntax, logic, test results, etc. of every control, widget, style, browser, and so on. I can just write a post and refer to it later. This…
It does, actually. Sometimes. One of the big risks of using ARIA to define text content is that it often gets overlooked in translation. Automated translation services often do not capture it. Those who pay for localization services all too often miss content in ARIA attributes when sending text strings…
My parents argued the Internet was a fad. They may still be right. Media outlets have settled on October 29 as the official birthday of the Internet. It’s the day that Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA sent a message over a two-computer network (the other end being a computer at Stanford…
This year the a11yTO team put together its third conference, adding a day for the built environment (#a11yIRL) and another day for gaming (#a11yTOGaming), bringing the entire conference to four days. The collection of three conferences has been branded #a11yWeekTO. Throughout the conference, attendees were incredibly positive about the venue,…
Since the early days of the web, when images could be floated and text would wrap around them, designers have wanted to bring drop caps onto the web. Then we learned how terrible a pattern like <img alt=”M” align=”left”>atthew is for users, and CSS introduced :first-letter, letting us believe all…
TL;DR: for standard HTML controls and standard ARIA patterns (widgets), you do not need to add instructions for screen readers on how to use them nor what they are. When a screen reader encounters an element on the page that invites interaction beyond reading, it typically provides users with instructions…