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…
At Smashing Conference in New York on Tuesday, October 15, Microsoft is hosting a lunch session as part of its The Web We Want initiative. Developers are pitching their wants. I was invited to pitch my request, but since I will not be at the conference I was asked for…
The first DevOpsDays Buffalo conference just wrapped up and it was great inaugural local event for an international conference brand. The organizers did a great job and it was encouraging to see so many local companies sending groups and teams, not just one or two people. It was also a…
The title of this post is a play on Jason Grigsby’s recent post An HTML attribute potentially worth $4.4M to Chipotle. In it he asks: How many other people have failed to finish an order because the form doesn’t support autofill and the error messages aren’t helpful? An HTML attribute…
Others in this sorta-series: Under-Engineered Custom Radio Buttons and Checkboxen Under-Engineered Toggles Under-Engineered Toggles Too This is the latest, and not last, in my informal series of posts on under-engineered controls. Generally I am looking at the minimum amount of CSS necessary to style native HTML controls while also retaining…
I regularly work on projects with HTML tables that have been pushed to the edge with styles, scripts, and widget features. A common pattern is where rows are hidden until the user opts to show them. Unfortunately, the pattern is often over-complicated with unnecessary script and styles that regularly break…
If you are working on a custom control, a complex widget, or a novel interface element to integrate into a project, library, or framework, there are some core features you need to build. These represent not just what works for users across the most contexts and preferences, but also what…
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. Continue reading this post. Use <input type=”checkbox”>…
Another case of the headline saying it all. If you have a valid, accessible search field (with a useful, sensible label) then you can probably ignore type=”search” and use type=”text” instead. I made a code sample you can use for testing in your preferred set-up; it is what I used…
Calendar controls, date pickers, date widgets, whatever you call them, however they are described, they follow the same basic principle — present the user with a calendar to enter a date (and sometimes a time). Chris Blakeley, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The native implementations come from browsers when authors use <input…
Early in 2017 I filed an issue against WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices (APG) requesting a change to the menu navigation pattern. Despite a great deal of feedback in agreement, it languished. In late 2017 I wrote Don’t Use ARIA Menu Roles for Site Nav and started actively campaigning against the APG…
Heading this off early: uniquity uniq·ui·ty; \ yüˈnikwətē, -wətē, -i \Uniqueness; quality of being unique. There is a place where accessibility practitioners hang out and try to out-do each other with niche knowledge of nuance. While loitering in one, a question came up about text fields that have the same…