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…
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…
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…
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…
Google engineers have proposed a new HTML element, <toast> or <std-toast>, that is a container for presenting brief or simple notifications to users. But of course it is not quite that straightforward. Backlash It is going to be impossible to extricate this proposal from the reactions it has garnered. So…
I kind of missed it this year. I was presenting at YGLF and was invested in the other talks, so my annual tweet thread of my accessibility posts since the previous GAAD did not come out on time. Instead I filled up timelines last night. Below are eight tweets with…
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…