CSS Can Influence Screenreaders | Ben Myers
This surprises me. But forewarned is forearmed.
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I Don’t Care What Google or Apple or Whomever Did | Adrian Roselli
Cargo cultism is not a strategy:
Apple and Google get it wrong just as often as the rest of us.
BBC - Future Media Standards & Guidelines - Accessibility Guidelines v2.0
The minimum dependency for a web site should be an internet connection and the ability to parse HTML.
Accessible HTML Elements | Amber’s Website
Amber runs through some HTML elements that help you provide semantic information—and accessibility—for your website: headings, paragraphs, lists, and more:
You may be aware that ARIA roles are often used with HTML elements. I haven’t written about them here, as it’s good to see how HTML written without ARIA can still be accessible.
Inclusive Inputs « Texte | ovl – code & design
This is a great walkthough of making a common form pattern accessible. No complex code here: some HTML is all that’s needed.
Overcoming my panic towards accessibility | Zell Liew
This is very open and honest. Thank you for writing it, Zell.
HTML: The Inaccessible Parts - daverupert.com
Well, this is a grim collection from Dave:
There are some cases where even using plain ol’ HTML causes accessibility problems. I get frustrated and want to quit web development whenever I read about these types of issues. Because if browsers can’t get this right, what hope is there for the rest of us.
It’s worth clicking through each link he lists—the situation is often much more nuanced than simply “Don’t use X.”
Why the GOV.UK Design System team changed the input type for numbers - Technology in government
Some solid research here. Turns out that using input type=”text” inputmode=”numeric” pattern="[0-9]*" is probably a better bet than using input type="number".
Link Targets and 3.2.5 | Adrian Roselli
Here are the many, many reasons why you should not open links in a new window (or tab).
Regardless of what accessibility conformance level you target, do not arbitrarily open links in a new window or tab. If you are required to do so anyway, inform users in text.
Standards for Writing Accessibly – A List Apart
- Write Chronologically, Not Spatially
- Write Left to Right, Top to Bottom
- Don’t Use Colors and Icons Alone
- Describe the Action, Not the Behavior
A Complete Guide to Links and Buttons | CSS-Tricks
Chris takes two side-by-side deep dives; one into the a element, the other into the button element.
Even if you think you already know those elements well, I bet there’ll be something new here for you. Like, did you know that the button element can have form over-riding attributes like formaction, formenctype, formmethod, formnovalidate, and formtarget?
ARIA labels | Amber’s Website
A great explanation of aria-label and aria-labelledby!
Custom Styling Form Inputs With Modern CSS Features | CSS-Tricks
It’s now easier than ever to style form controls without sacrificing semantics and accessibility:
The reason is that we can finally style the ::before and ::after pseudo-elements on the
<input>tag itself. This means we can keep and style an<input>and won’t need any extra elements. Before, we had to rely on the likes of an extra<div>or<span>, to pull off a custom design.
The demo is really nice. And best of all, you can wrap all of these CSS enhancements in a feaure query:
Hopefully, you’re seeing how nice it is to create custom form styles these days. It requires less markup, thanks to pseudo-elements that are directly on form inputs. It requires less fancy style switching, thanks to custom properties. And it has pretty darn good browser support, thanks to
@supports.
Could browsers fix more accessibility problems automatically?
Some really interesting ideas here from Hidde on how browsers could provide optional settings for users to override developers when it comes to accessibility issues like colour contrast, focus styles, and autoplaying videos.
Making a ‘post-it game’ PWA with mobile accelerometer API’s | Trys Mudford
I made an offhand remark at the Clearleft Christmas party and Trys ran with it…
Why `details` is Not an Accordion - daverupert.com
At the risk of being a broken record; HTML really needs
<accordion>,<tabs>,<dialog>,<dropdown>, and<tooltip>elements. Not more “low-level primitives” but good ol’ fashioned, difficult-to-get-consensus-on elements.
Hear, hear!
I wish browsers would prioritize accessibility improvements over things like main thread scheduling optimization to unblock tracking pixels and the Sisyphean task of competing with native.
If we really want to win, let’s make it easy for everyone to access the Web.
The Web We’ve Made
Let us not overlook the fact that a semantic HTML web site is inherently accessible by default. When we bend the web to our will, we break that. So we have a responsibility to correct it. Sure the new technologies are neat, but the end result is usually garbage. This all requires some next-level narcissism that our goals and priorities as developers are far more important than that of the audience we’re theoretically building software to serve.
A Web Developers New Working Week
I think these are great habit-forming ideas for any web designer or developer: a day without using your mouse; a day with your display set to grayscale; a day spent using a different web browser; a day with your internet connection throttled. I’m going to try these!
Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours – alexdanco.com
Worlds of scarcity are made out of things. Worlds of abundance are made out of dependencies. That’s the software playbook: find a system made of costly, redundant objects; and rearrange it into a fast, frictionless system made of logical dependencies. The delta in performance is irresistible, and dependencies are a compelling building block: they seem like just a piece of logic, with no cost and no friction. But they absolutely have a cost: the cost is complexity, outsourced agency, and brittleness. The cost of ownership is up front and visible; the cost of access is back-dated and hidden.
Data Patterns Catalogue
I really like the work that IF are doing to document patterns around handling data:
- Signing in to a service
- Giving and removing consent
- Giving access to data
- Getting access to data
- Understanding automated decisions
- Doing security checks
Each pattern has a description, advantages, limitations, and examples.