I built this for me. An audience of one. A way to keep sharp the skills that I am not always able to use on a project. My requirements were simple: responsive (print, small screens), accessible (beyond screen readers), and kinda fun. Since it relies on a JSON data source…
Many of my clients over the years have relied on fields in tables. Sometimes a checkbox to select a row, sometimes text inputs to update information, sometimes buttons select something. Rarely are they interested in a block of label text above the field, and I cannot disagree with them. The…
Once major browsers started supporting <details> & <summary> developers immediately started to play with them to see what sorts of patterns they could enhance or replace. This is a good thing. Experimentation pushes boundaries, improves understanding. However, we need to be careful of christening this new-to-us interaction as the solution…
Last night I drove up to Toronto, braving concurrent matches from two of their local sporting clubs, parking in oblivion, navigating a maze of progressive rings of fencing, sneaking into the venue via a propped service door, and presented on the role of design in accessibility. It was a code-light…
When a keyboard-only user or screen reader user comes to page that uses CSS to create a layout, there is a chance that what is on the screen does not match the flow of the page. In the posts HTML Source Order vs CSS Display Order and Source Order Matters…
Updated Intro Whether you use a <button> or <input type=”checkbox”> for your toggle depends on a few factors: Use <button> if: you can count on JavaScript being available, flipping the toggle has an immediate effect, the toggle will never have an indeterminate state. Go read Under-Engineered Toggles Too. Use <input…
Direct link in case the embed does not work. I also mentioned some resources at the end of my talk: How to Meet WCAG 2 (Quick Reference) Intopia Launches WCAG 2.1 Map Inclusive Design Principles Inclusive Design posters from Barclays Tweets Some people tweeted about my workshop. I also tweeted…
The world wide web has officially lasted 30 consecutive years, which means it’s catching up to its parent, the Internet, which itself is bearing down on 50. That’s an important distinction. The Internet is not the web; it is the foundation on which the web was born. In honor of…
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) does a good job of providing supporting techniques to help reviewers determine if a specific case would violate a given Success Criterion (SC). WCAG 2.0, which became a recommendation at the end of 2008, has carried these techniques over to WCAG 2.1, finalized in…
HTML5 gives us form field validation for free. The problem is that the default messages browsers provide are not always useful and typically do not work with assistive technology. I made an example on CodePen that uses an email field (type=”email”), is required (required), and uses a pattern to restrict…
The pun in the title is that some people pronounce the a11y numeronym as “alley”. That makes the full title sound like uncanny valley, the concept of human-looking things seeming almost, but not quite, human and therefore creepy. In accessibility, the same thing can happen. Developers can try so hard…
Last week while whining about having accessibility contributions to FOSS projects dismissed, I had a Twitter conversation about when the same thing happens with clients. I have a method to deal with that, however, which I briefly outlined on Twitter. I promised to expand on it in a blog post,…