Tagged “hiding”

This article is not about when or why you would use visually-hidden content. There’s a number of excellent articles that discuss these questions in detail, notably Scott O’Hara’s Inclusively Hidden. But most of them don’t go into much detail about the specific CSS involved — why do we use this particular pattern, with these specific properties? So today I’m going to dissect it, looking at each of the properties in turn, why it’s there, and why it isn’t something else.

I recorded a talk on “Hiding elements on the web” for @freeagent’s tech blog. It’s a tricky #FrontEnd & #a11y topic so I try to cover some good practices and responsible choices. Hope it helps someone. (Also it’s my first video. Lots of room to improve!)

In order to code modern component designs we often need to hide then reveal elements. At other times we want to provide content to one type of user but hide it from another because it’s not relevant to their mode of browsing. In all cases accessibility should be front and centre in our thoughts. Here’s my approach, heavily inspired by Scott O’Hara’s definitive guide Inclusively Hidden.