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Tag: a11y

Quick Tip: Dialog Focusphoto of clouds during daytime

Quick Tip: Dialog Focus

Published on March 10, 2026

The specifications for dialogs and modals recommend placing focus on the first focusable item in the dialog. The vast majority of the time this is a close button. this means that a screen reader user will hear something similar to “Dialog, Shopping Cart, Close, button.”

As a user this is confusing. I just added something to my cart, or I just opened it to checkout. And now your site is telling me that while I’m in the cart I should close it.

I strongly recommend that this is not the best practice we should be following. We should be providing the user with information they need in a way that encourages them to explore. To accomplish this, I recommend placing the focus on the heading of the dialog. We do this by providing a proper ID and tabindex="-1". Now when the user opens the cart dialog they would hear something like “Dialog, Shopping Cart.” This tells me my focus has shifted due to my actions, where the focus went by identifying, and I’m not hit with the confusing close button.

This is my opinion, it differs from many, but it fills the gap between accessibility and user experience to create a better flow for everyone. But I’m not alone in this opinion.

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A11y 101: 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellationan animation of pointing finger on a black background

A11y 101: 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation

Published on March 2, 2026

Last week I wrote about gestures and pointers. This week we look at the next criteria, Pointer Cancellation. I mentioned that we wanted events to fire on the “Up” or “release” action. And that’s what this criteria is all about. We need to make sure that if a user creates a down event on a control, we need to allow them to cancel. Let’s look at the methods used.

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A11y 101: 2.5.1 Pointer Gesturesbrown dog sitting on grass

A11y 101: 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures

Published on February 23, 2026

If you’ve been following my work or this blog for a while, you’ll know I’m always referencing that authors need to support both mouse users as well as keyboard users. What I haven’t mentioned much of is touch. Touch devices have given us a number of different modalities to interact with applications and the web. The problem arises when users don’t have the ability to touch the screen, or only have a single pointer when multiple are needed. Or perhaps they can’t perform the gesture. This is the point of this success criteria, providing an alternative for those users. Let’s check out how we do this.

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Quick Tip: Do Not Replicate OS Behaviordata codes through eyeglasses

Quick Tip: Do Not Replicate OS Behavior

Published on February 5, 2026

This applies to browser behavior as well. I’ve been encountering a significant number of sites recently where the site tries to offer the user ways to make the site more accessible. Sometimes these are part of an overlay or widget providing accessibility “fixes” and sometimes they are part of the core code. In both cases they are taking the wrong approach to implementing help. Let me explain why.

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A11y 101: 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum)man sitting on a wheelchair
A11y 101: 2.4.7 Focus Visibleround mirror

A11y 101: 2.4.7 Focus Visible

Published on November 17, 2025

Disabilities come in all sorts. So do users. Some users can manipulate a mouse. Some rely on keyboard alone. Others have assistive technology. When you use a mouse, where your mouse is located is visible. This lets the sighted mouse user know what they are clicking on and where the focus is. Keyboard only users need something else. Let’s get into the details of what is needed.

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A11y 101: 2.4.6 Headings and Labelsvinyl music records with labels
Quick Tip: Use More Than Tab in Screen Readersblue laptop computer

Quick Tip: Use More Than Tab in Screen Readers

Published on November 3, 2025

It’s been a busy week in my house, so I’m going to keep this quick. One of the issues I often see flagged by other accessibility testers is that something doesn’t work with keyboard navigation. The vast majority of times I revisit these, it turns out the tester doesn’t fully understand how screen readers work. I want to highlight a few items for folks.

Modes

Screen readers typically have 3 main modes. The virtual browser, forms, and application.

Virtual Browser

The virtual browser is when the screen reader technology is intercepting the keyboard input and uses that to execute a function in the browser for you. When we press tab we jump to the next active item. Pressing the down arrow will read the next line, chunk, or set number of characters in a paragraph. Here’s a short list of common commands:

  • H: moves through the headings on the page
  • T: moves through the tables on the page
  • Control+Alt+Arrow: Move from one table cell to the next in the direction of the arrow
  • L: moves through the lists

Forms

When a user encounters a form element, the screen reader should automatically shift to the forms mode. There usually is ab audible sound to indicate this. This mode moves the screen reader out of the way to interact directly with the page via the keyboard. This limits how to navigate to using only the Tab and Shift keys to move among the active elements in the form.

Application

In this mode you need to have the role=”application” and then the screen reader again gets out of the way of the keyboard. However, even if you use active controls navigating between them is completely up to the author. They will work with Space & Enter to activate, but the author really needs to define the navigation scheme and controls to use the tool.

Don’t flag an issue for not being keyboard accessible with a screen reader on unless you can identify it is an application or is also not accessible without the screen reader.

There’s way more to this, but the great folks over at Tetralogical have a great screen reader misconceptions article and a full break down of commands.

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Rethinking Cookie Dialogsfour assorted color of macaroons

Rethinking Cookie Dialogs

Published on October 6, 2025

If you are anything like me, you don’t want your data sold to third parties. You probably run ad blockers. Maybe a VPN. Some governments are trying to help by requiring the site to declare what cookies are used and providing the user to opt out. But the current method of displaying this information tends to have some serious accessibility issues. I have another way of thinking about them I’d like to propose.

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Quick Tip: ARIA Live Regionssunflower garden under blue sky