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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A few years ago I made a Venn diagram using floats and absolute positioning. It was fine. Nothing to really brag about, but it got the point across. I had use for CSS shapes in a project and wanted to play around beyond what the project itself allowed. I decided…
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…