Tags: aria

The web we broke. — Ethan Marcotte

Like Eric, Ethan is feeling rightly glum about the state of accessibility on the web. But…

Right now, I’m trying to focus on this one question:

What’s one thing I wish I understood better about accessibility?

Fighting uphill | Eric Bailey

Eric is down about the current dismal state of accessibility on the web. Understandably so. It’s particularly worrying that the problem might be embedded into hiring practices:

Overwhelmingly, crushingly, we shove new developers towards learning JavaScript single page application frameworks (SPAs). While many of these frameworks pay lip service towards preserving accessibility, if you do your homework you find that the majority of them were built without assistive technology in mind.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Eric also points to initiatives that could really help.

Still, this is a tough question to ask out loud:

What if we’re losing?

Revisiting the abbr element

Ire takes a deep dive into implementing an accessible tool tip.

Make Your ARIA Labels Sing on Key — Knowbility

A good look at the (over)use of the aria-label attribute that confirms the first rule of ARIA.

Stepping away from Sass

I think Cathy might’ve buried the lede:

The knock on effect of this was removing media queries. As I moved towards some of the more modern features of CSS the need to target specific screen sizes with unique code was removed.

But on the topic of Sass, layout is now taken care of with CSS grid, variables are taken care of with CSS custom properties, and mixins for typography are taken care of with calc().

Personally, I’ve always found the most useful feature of Sass to simply be that you can have lots of separate Sass files that get combined into one CSS file—very handy for component libraries.

Using aria-live

A terrific explanation of the aria-live attribute from Ire. If you’re doing anything with Ajax, this is vital knowledge.

Difference between currentColor & Custom Properties | Mike Riethmuller

I had to read through this twice, but I think I get it now (I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer). Very useful if you’re doing theming in CSS.

Jongert

Nick demonstrates the responsive power of variable fonts by recreating a lovely design from Jacob Jongert.

Grab that browser window and get squishin’!

Incomplete Open Cubes Revisited

Art, geometry, and code. Sol LeWitt started it. Rob saw it through.

The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing — Smashing Magazine

This is very timely. I’ve been doing some consulting at a company where they are perhaps a little over-reliant on automated accessibility tests.

Automated accessibility tests are a great resource to have, but they can’t automatically make your site accessible. Use them as one step of a larger testing process.

A Tale of Two Buttons

In defence of the cascade (especially now that we’ve got CSS custom properties).

I think embracing CSS’s cascade can be a great way to encourage consistency and simplicity in UIs. Rather than every new component being a free for all, it trains both designers and developers to think in terms of aligning with and re-using what they already have.

Remember, every time you set a property in CSS you are in fact overriding something (even if it’s just the default user agent styles). In other words, CSS code is mostly expressing exceptions to a default design.

Nutrition Cards for Accessible Components A11Y Expectations

A handy bunch of checklists from Dave for creating accessible components. Each component gets a card that lists the expectations for interaction.

Accessibility: Start with the foundations | susan jean robertson

I encourage you to think about and make sure you are using the right elements at the right time. Sometimes I overthink this, but that’s because it’s that important to me - I want to make sure that the markup I use helps people understand the content, and doesn’t hinder them.

The Accessibility of Styled Form Controls & Friends | a11y_styled_form_controls

A great collection of styled and accessible form elements:

Form controls are necessary in many interfaces, but are often considered annoying, if not downright difficult, to style. Many of the markup patterns presented here can serve as a baseline for building more attractive form controls without having to exclude users who may rely on assistive technology to get things done.

Short note on progressive ARIA by The Paciello Group

Léonie makes a really good point here: if you’re adding aria attributes to indicate interactions you’re making available through JavaScript, then make sure you also use JavaScript to add those aria attributes.

Transform your type online with variable fonts | Creative Bloq

This is a great interview with Rich on all things related to web typography—including, of course, variable fonts.

I’m so lucky that I literally get to work side by side with Rich; I get to geek out with him about font stuff all the time.

Font Playground — Play with variable fonts!

A fun way to play around with the options in variable fonts.

Ampersand 2018 | Rob Weychert

Rob attended the excellent Ampersand event last Friday and he’s made notes for each and every talk.

Don’t Use The Placeholder Attribute — Smashing Magazine

A lot of the issues here are with abuses of the placeholder attribute—using it as a label, using it for additional information, etc.—whereas using it quite literally as a placeholder can be thought of as an enhancement (I almost always preface mine with “e.g.”).

Still, there’s no getting around that terrible colour contrast issue: if the contrast were greater, it would look too much like an actual pre-filled value, and that’s potentially worse.

Text Effects - a Collection by Mandy Michael on CodePen

Mandy’s experiments with text effects in CSS are kinda mindblowing—I can’t wait to see her at Ampersand at the end of the month!