TL;DR: Avoid setting heading levels greater than six (6). This applies whether using aria-level or the proposed headingstart HTML attribute. Use HTML <h#> elements whenever possible. ARIA The aria-level attribute, when applied to headings (or nodes with the heading role) lets authors set an integer value for a heading level.…
Yeah, that’s not exactly a helpful title. The relatively new Web Platform Baseline offering does not track browser support for accessibility features built into the web platform. If you need to understand whether browsers support accessibility features as your own base level set of requirements, for legal or other compliance…
The native HTML <select> is renowned for its styling limitations. Even with control over the closed state and trigger appearance, the options themselves are still defined primarily by the browser and the OS. While I think this is generally fine (preferred, even), the <selectlist> (nee <selectmenu>) hopes to change that.…
The Test Page The Code Testing Results Keyboard Screen Readers Voice Control, Forced Colors, Speed Media Queries: 20 December 2023 Audio Description: 20 December 2023 Wrap-up Browsers each provide built-in video players for the <video> element. Nearly four years ago Scott Vinkle wrote How accessible is the HTML video player?,…
It was late 2020 when I last tested how browsers use CSS display properties to break the semantics of elements. I had been waiting for Safari to fix how it handles display: contents for four years now, and was excited when the announcement came in June. Then I started testing…
I have spent a few years banging on about ensuring scrolling areas on a page are accessible to keyboard-only users. This is partly because the term “keyboard” maps to other input types that we distill to “keyboard” for ease of reference (speech input, sip-and-puff, on-screen keyboards, scanning software, etc.). When…
This post serves no purpose other than to demonstrate the fidelity of screen readers when announcing non-emoji Unicode characters when using default settings. There is no judgment on which is correct. This is simply for reference. I grabbed the following tweet and recorded it across common screen readers (WordPress ate…
The <dl> has existed since HTML+, or 1993, when it was called definition list. VoiceOver on iOS has existed since 2009, when it was introduced with the iPhone 3GS. Neither VoiceOver on iOS nor iPadOS had support for this core feature of HTML that was in existence for 16 years…
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…
CSS resets are a collection of CSS styles that undo the default browser styling of many or most HTML elements. Recently I have seen cases of developers using display: contents on lists and headings to remove the margins and padding, and generally to visually do what a CSS reset might…
This weekend I read a post about techniques to get Apple’s new San Francisco font into your CSS. Since San Francisco is only just being added to iOS and OS X, it can be a bit tricky to get hold of it in Safari. What struck me was the use…
Make sure you view this on Google’s flavor of Chrome, otherwise, well, I have no idea what will happen. Sometimes it’s frustrating being a developer who’s been around to see Mosaic supplanted by Netscape Navigator supplanted by Internet Explorer supplanted by Chrome/WebKit. Developers just love dumping one platform for the…