TL;DR: If you plan to style text highlighted by the browser, you must give it sufficient contrast — 3:1 for the highlight block against its background and (probably) 4.5:1 for the text within that highlighted block against that background. CSS Context CSS provides methods to style the highlights that browsers…
TL;DR: Keep your image alternative text brief, devoid of special characters, empty of URLs, and ideally in one language. Here We Go Sometimes you can have too much alternative text, particularly for an <img>. I don’t mean there is a limit to what is allowed, I mean there is a…
It’s none. Clarification Let me clarify: don’t set a base font size. body { /* font-size: yeah, no */ } Got a linter or code checker or boss-man hassling you that you need to set something? Ok, use something like this: html { font-size: 100%; } Because This approach has…
Yes, that is the bear from Jakob’s clearly spurious alternative text example and yes, that is The Fonz after jumping the shark. If you have been following the saga of Jakob Nielsen, there a few quotes I could use here: Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster (Nietzsche).…
A rambling collection of thoughts from reading through the WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey #10 Results. Most of this was in a Masto thread, but I opted to post it here so I can laugh at myself later. Disability This opening nugget is important for understanding some of my commentary:…
Just another usability and accessibility pro telling authors not to do the thing they continue to do. It’s Ok to Disable Buttons There are plenty of cases where you want to disable a button until a user takes a conscious action to enable it, such as when launching nuclear missiles.…
There are plenty of use cases for embedding third-party content on a site, as well as local content that may not be in HTML. Perhaps you gave a talk and want to share your slides. Sometimes you want to reference a video that exists only on YouTube. Maybe you have…
This post supplements Browser Video Players Review. There I wade into the de facto accessibility of the <video> element based on the default video players provided by browsers. The results of my testing here update the tables in that post. One of the primary challenges of using the browsers’ default…
Before you get too far into this post, maybe read Browser Video Players Review. There I wade into the accessibility of the <video> element based on the video players browsers provide. Then maybe read Scott Jehl’s How to Use Responsive HTML Video (…and Audio!). I am leaning on support in…
Download a 2.6MB tagged PDF of my slides or try the embedded view if your browser displays PDF inline. I was invited Malmö, Sweden to present two talks at Øredev. Well, they asked me to do one but then suggested that hey, since I’m already there and stuff, how about…
Again, title says it all. However, there is an equally bad opposite approach you might be tempted to use, so let me clarify: Don’t use ARIA grid roles simply to make rows clickable in a table, and Don’t put click handlers on table rows (<tr>s) to make them clickable. Step…
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.…