Tags: keyboard

A tale of three skeuomorphs

A trashcan, a tyepface, and a tactile keyboard. Marcin gets obsessive (as usual).

Takin’ five. — Ethan Marcotte

I linked to the first of Ethan’s short videos on accessibility last week, but it’s well worth checking out all five:

1. Introduction to using VoiceOver on macOS
2. Designing beautiful focus states
3. Flexible and accessible typesetting
4. Responsively designing with viewport units
5. Designing beautiful and accessible drop caps

Striking a Balance Between Native and Custom Select Elements | CSS-Tricks

I think this a solution worthy of Solomon. In this case, the Gordian knot is the select element and its inevitable recreation in order to style it.

What if we instead deliver a native select by default and replace it with a more aesthetically pleasing one if possible? That’s where the “hybrid” select idea comes into action. It’s “hybrid” because it consists of two selects, showing the appropriate one at the right moment:

• A native select, visible and accessible by default
• A custom select, hidden until it’s safe to be interacted with a mouse

The implementation uses a genius combination of a hover media query and an adjacent sibling selector in CSS. It has been tested on a number of device/platform/browser combinations but more tests are welcome!

What I love about this solution is that it satisfies the stakeholders insisting on a custom component but doesn’t abandon all the built-in accessibility that you get from native form controls.

Optimizing keyboard navigation using tabindex and ARIA — Sara Soueidan

Smart thinking from Sara to improve usability for keyboard users by using aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" to skip duplicate links:

A good rule of thumb for similar cases is that if you have multiple consecutive links to the same page, there is probably a chance to improve keyboard navigation by skipping some of those links to reduce the number of tab stops to one. The less tab stops, the better, as long as it does not worsen or compromise on other aspects of usability.

I’ve cautiously implemented this pattern now over on The Session where snippets of comments had both a title link and a “more” link going to the same destination.

Better Form Inputs for Better Mobile User Experiences | CSS-Tricks

Here’s one simple, practical way to make apps perform better on mobile devices: always configure HTML input fields with the correct type, inputmode, and autocomplete attributes. While these three attributes are often discussed in isolation, they make the most sense in the context of mobile user experience when you think of them as a team.

This is an excellent deep dive with great advice:

You may think that you are familiar with the basic autocomplete options, such as those that help the user fill in credit card numbers or address form fields, but I’d urge you to review them to make sure that you are aware of all of the options. The spec lists over 50 values!

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!

Beyond automatic accessibility testing: 6 things I check on every website I build - Manuel Matuzović

Six steps that everyone can do to catch accessibility gotchas:

1. Check image descriptions
2. Disable all styles
3. Validate HTML
4. Check the document outline
5. Grayscale mode
6. Use the keyboard

Maybe You Don’t Need a Date Picker | Adrian Roselli

In some situations, a date picker is overkill:

I have relied on plain text inputs as date fields with custom validation for the site, typically using the same logic on the client and the server. For known dates — birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc — it has tested well.

Focusing on Focus Styles | CSS-Tricks

A deep dive into the :focus pseudo-class and why it’s important.

Improving the Accessibility of 24 ways | CSS-Tricks

Paul walks us through the process of making some incremental accessibility improvements to this year’s 24 Ways.

Creating something new will always attract attention and admiration, but there’s an under-celebrated nobility in improving what already exists. While not all changes may be visual, they can have just as much impact.

Typewriters in the Technical Museum in Figueres | Flickr

If you enjoyed reading Marcin’s serendipitous story on Twitter, here are the pictures to accompany it.

bitsofcode | Tools for Developing Accessible Websites

Ire rounds up a bunch of tools you can use to test accessibility, from dev tools to Tenon.

I Wanted To Type a Number | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA

Choosing the right input type for your form field.

Adapting to Input · An A List Apart Article

Jason breaks down the myths of inputs being tied to device form factors. Instead, given the inherent uncertainty around input, the only sensible approach is progressive enhancement.

Now is the time to experiment with new forms of web input. The key is to build a baseline input experience that works everywhere and then progressively enhance to take advantage of new capabilities of devices if they are available.

Touch Keyboard Type ‘Cheat Sheet’ - Labs - Baymard Institute

A useful primer on which combinations of attributes and values work best for which form fields: type, autocomplete, autocorrect, and autocapitalize.

HIKE - Introduction to accessibility concepts for the Web

It really isn’t hard to get the basics of accessibility right on the web …and yet those basics are often neglected.

Here’s a handy shortlist to run through, HIKE:

• H stands for headings and semantic markup.
• I stands for images and labels.
• K stands for keyboard navigation.
• E asks for you to ACT with a little extra love for custom components and more.

(ACT = ARIA, Colour Contrast, Text Size)

Quotes and Accents

Jessica’s handy guide to writing the right quotes and accents on a Mac keyboard.

» Responsive Design for Apps — Part 1 Cloud Four Blog

A great piece by Jason analysing the ever-blurring lines between device classes.

Mind you, there is one question he doesn’t answer which would help clear up his framing of the situation. That question is:

What’s a web app?

New Rule: Every Desktop Design Has To Go Finger-Friendly (Global Moxie)

Josh takes an-depth look at the navigation design implications of touch/keyboard hybrid devices, coming to a similar conclusion as Luke and Jason:

Unfortunately, the top-of-screen navigation and menus of traditional desktop layouts are outright hostile to hybrid ergonomics. Tried-and-true desktop conventions have to change to make room for fingers and thumbs.

Want to test for a hybrid device? Tough luck. Instead, argues Josh, the best you can do is assume that any device visiting your site could be touch-enabled.

Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat

Because everything goes better with keyboard cat.