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Archive of stories in "A11y"

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Clemence Ayekple

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8h ago

Your Dropdown Menu Is Hiding Half Your Website

Most site navigation menus shouldn’t use role="menu" at all. A plain list and a button that shows and hides it works for keyboards, screen…

Cover for Day 19 of 30 in the Accessible by Default series: “Your Dropdown Menu Is Hiding Half Your Website”, about navigation menus and disclosure widgets. An illustration shows a navigation bar with a focused “Students” button and its dropdown list open underneath.

Jainish Soni

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11h ago

The Gap Between Compliance and Access, Part Two

Three bugs I only found by putting the mouse away.

A group gathers on a Toronto sidewalk beside a red and white TTC streetcar. A woman wearing an access support lanyard addresses them, and a person in a power wheelchair faces her with their back to the camera. Two people photograph the scene.

Clemence Ayekple

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1d ago

The Screen Changed. Did Anyone Hear It? Live Regions for Dynamic Updates

How to make “Saved”, “3 results” and “Something went wrong” reach screen reader users without stealing their focus.

Cover for Day 17 of 30, Accessible by Default: the title “The screen changed. Did anyone hear it?” beside a speech bubble saying “Saved.” with sound waves, representing an on-screen update being announced aloud.

Clemence Ayekple

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1d ago

The Popup Nobody Could Find: Building Accessible Modals and Dialogs

A modal makes four promises — focus moves in, the page behind goes quiet, Escape gets you out, and focus comes back — and the native…

Cover for Day 18 of 30 in the Accessible by Default series: “Accessible Modals and Dialogs — Focus in. Page quiet. Escape out. Focus back.” A small illustration shows a dialog box with a focused button over a dimmed page.

Clemence Ayekple

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Nov 2

ARIA Is a Promise. Most Pages Break It.

What ARIA actually does, why the first rule of ARIA is “don’t use ARIA”, and the handful of attributes that are worth knowing on day one.

Day 16 of 30 in the Accessible by Default series: “ARIA Is a Promise. Most Pages Break It.” A code tag reading role=”button” sits above an Enter key, with the note that the role is a promise of focus and keyboard support.

Anatoli Kuzmiankou

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Nov 1

Improving Graph Accessibility: Building Custom Plugins for Chart.js

Today, web development is about more than just performance, algorithms, and the divide between backend and frontend. Usability has become a…

Improving Graph Accessibility: Building Custom Plugins for Chart.js

Clemence Ayekple

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Nov 1

Links Go Places. Buttons Do Things.

Pick the wrong one, and you quietly break keyboards, screen readers and “Open in new tab”. One question gets it right every time.

Day 15 of 30, Accessible by Default: “Links go places. Buttons do things.” An <a href> chip with an arrow pointing away sits above a solid <button> chip.

Clemence Ayekple

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Oct 30

“Invalid” Is Not an Error Message: Accessible Form Errors and Validation

How to tell people what went wrong, where, and how to fix it, in a way that works for screen readers, magnifiers and tired eyes.

Day 14 of 30: “Invalid” Is Not an Error Message, accessible form errors and validation. A phone number field shows a thick red border and a clear text error, “Phone number must be 10 digits. You entered 6”, above an Enrol button.

Clemence Ayekple

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Oct 27

Every Field Needs a Name: Labels, Groups and Instructions in Accessible Forms

Placeholders vanish, “Yes / No” means nothing without its question, and a hint nobody can find isn’t a hint. Here’s how to name every form…

Cover for Day 13 of 30 in “Accessible by Default”: the title “Every Field Needs a Name” beside a simple form card where a “Full name” field has an amber “<label>” tag attached to it.

Niels Boey

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Oct 23

iPhone Duo’s black bar problem is great news for accessibility

As expected, people have a lot to say about the iPhone Duo. When the first reviews started coming out one point that a lot of people…

iPhone Duo laying on a wood desk showing an unoptimised app with a black bar on the right side of the app UI.