Tagged “a11y”
Striking a Balance Between Native and Custom Select Elements (on CSS-Tricks)
We’re not going to try to replicate everything that the browser does by default with a native select element. We’re going to literally use a select element when any assistive tech is used. But when a mouse is being used, we’ll show the styled version and make it function as a select element.
We’ve ruined the Web. Here’s how we fix it. (This is HCD podcast)
During the COVID situation, people have an urgent need to access critical information online. But in 2020, the average webpage is rammed full of large JavaScript files, huge images etc, and as a result is slow to load. This problem is likely to be most keenly felt by those who don’t have the luxury of fast internet – potentially the same people who need access to that critical information the most.
Here’s a brilliant discussion between Gerry McGovern and Jeremy Keith on that problem, suggesting tactics to help fix things such as performance budgets, introducing tactics at the design stage to mimic slow connections and other access constraints, optimising for return visits, progressive enhancement and more.
Finding participants for user research - Service Manual (GOV.UK)
It’s also important to do research with all the different kinds of people who may need your service, including those who: have disabilities or use assistive technologies; have limited digital skills or poor literacy; and may need help to use your service.
Block Links: A tricky UI Problem
You have a “card” component which includes a heading, some text, an image, and a link to the full article, and it’s working great. Then along comes a UX requirement that the full card (not just the button or link) should be clickable. This is where things get complicated.
HTML: The Inaccessible Parts (daverupert.com)
Here’s Dave Rupert, frustratedly rounding up the accessibility shortfalls in browser implementations of native HTML elements.
I’ve always abided in the idea that “HTML is accessible by default and then we come along and mess it up”. But that’s not always the case. There are some cases where even using plain ol’ HTML causes accessibility problems.
Why the GOV.UK Design System team changed the input type for numbers (Technology in Government
Using
<input type="text" inputmode="numeric" pattern="[0-9]*">(instead of<input type="number") allows for a degree of separation between how the user enters data (“input mode”), what the browser expects the user input to contain (type equals number), and potentially how it tries to validate it.
Are My Colours Accessible?
Colour contrast and the use of colour is extremely important for certain groups of people with varying levels of visional impairment. Building upon the excellent Colorable, I wanted more context around the result. When you share the outcome with your colleagues, all the results, rules and what you’re aiming for, is easily understandable for when you have those awkward conversations with designers and marketers. Accessibility doesn’t have to be ugly.
The Contrast Triangle
Removing underlines from links in HTML text presents an accessibility challenge. In order for a design to be considered accessible, there is now a three-sided design contraint - or what I call "The Contrast Triangle". Your text, links and background colors must now all have sufficient contrast from each other. Links must have a contrast ratio of 3:1 from their surrounding text. By not using underlines, a design has to rely on contrast alone to achieve this.
BBC GEL Inclusive Components Technical Guide
The BBC Global Experience Language (GEL) Technical Guides are a series of framework-agnostic, code-centric recommendations and examples for building GEL design patterns in websites. They illustrate how to create websites that comply with all BBC guidelines and industry best practice, giving special emphasis to accessibility.
Responsive Type and Zoom (by Adrian Roselli)
When people zoom a page, it is typically because they want the text to be bigger. When we anchor the text to the viewport size, even with a (fractional) multiplier, we can take away their ability to do that. It can be as much a barrier as disabling zoom. If a user cannot get the text to 200% of the original size, you may also be looking at a WCAG 1.4.4 Resize text (AA) problem.
Design Better Forms (UX Collective)
As Andrew Coyle says, “Life is short. No one wants to fill out a form.”. Here, he presents a number of form design tips to make the user experience more bearable and increase completion rates.
Making a Better Custom Select Element (24 ways)
We want a way for someone to choose an item from a list of options, but it’s more complicated than just that. We want autocomplete options. We want to put images in there, not just text. The
optgroupelement is ugly, hard to style, and not announced by screen readers. I had high hopes for thedatalistelement, but it’s no good for people with low vision who zoom or use high contrast themes.selectinputs are limited in a lot of ways. Let’s work out how to make our own while keeping all the accessibility features of the original.
Building an accessible show/hide disclosure component with vanilla JS (Go Make Things)
A disclosure component is the formal name for the pattern where you click a button to reveal or hide content. This includes things like a “show more/show less” interaction for some descriptive text below a YouTube video, or a hamburger menu that reveals and hides when you click it.
Who Can Use
It's a tool that brings attention and understanding to how color contrast can affect different people with visual impairments.
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
The featured article in this week’s Accessibility Weekly newsletter was on recent improvements to the WAVE suite of accessibility testing tools.
I can’t remember using WAVE before, however just one quick test of fuzzylogic.me using their online tool revealed an accessibility issue with the linked SVG logo in the header. A great catch, now fixed, from which I learned something new. I’ll certainly be adding WAVE to my accessibility testing toolbox from here on in.
WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools that help authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. Our philosophy is to focus on issues that we know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.
Why much of the internet is closed off to blind people – BBC News
Following the recent watershed Domino’s Pizza case, BBC News reports that retailers in the USA & Canada are struggling to make their websites accessible and consumers are taking them to court.
Colors – a nicer color palette for the web
Skinning your prototypes just got easier - colors.css is a collection of skin classes to use while prototyping in the browser.
Beyond Automatic Testing (matuzo.at)
Six accessibility tests Viennese Front-end Developer Manuel Matusovic runs on every website he develops, beyond simply running a Lighthouse audit.
U.S. Supreme Court Favors Digital Accessibility in Domino’s Case
Digital products which are a public accommodation must be accessible, or will be subject to a lawsuit (and probably lose).
Using the tabindex attribute | TPG
Léonie Watson explains how the HTML tabindex attribute is used to manage keyboard focus. Of particular interest to me was a clarification of what tabindex="-1" does (because I always forget).
When tabindex is set to a negative integer like -1, (the element) becomes programmatically focusable but it isn’t included in the tab order. In other words, it can’t be reached by someone using the tab key to navigate through content, but it can be focused on with scripting.
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