Code posts

With the addition of Gez Lemon to the editing team, work continues on expanding and improving the HTML and screen reader support information.

By prioritising semantic HTML and offering keyboard-friendly alternatives for complex interactions, you help create a more inclusive experience for people who use a keyboard.

In this post, we explore how to use the <fieldset> and <legend> elements to group and label form elements effectively, creating a more accessible and well-structured experience.

As well as labelling text fields with input and labels, and grouping forms with the <fieldset> and <legend> elements, form validation and error messages are also essential to making forms accessible to everyone.

In this post about forms, we explore how to effectively label text fields using <input> and <label> elements to create form inputs that are both accessible and user-friendly.

Live regions have a reputation for being "flaky" and inconsistent. While this can be attributed in part to shortcomings in current implementations, the problem can also be caused by developers misunderstanding how live regions are intended to work.

When tabindex="0" is applied to an HTML element, the content marked up using that element will become keyboard focusable, and is therefore a good starting point for supporting keyboard accessibility. However, applying this attribute haphazardly or unnecessarily can reduce the experience for people who use a keyboard or an equivalent input device to navigate web content.

Like many inventions before it, Generative AI is changing the way we do things. Like those inventions that went before it, Generative AI is capable of great good and great harm, and like the humans that used those inventions before us, we need to be smart about the way we use Generative AI.

This post gives a high-level overview of what's new and what has changed in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, which have been promoted to stable W3C Recommendation today.

Sticky content helps prioritise important content so it's always visible, but it can create issues for sighted people who use a keyboard, or a keyboard-like device, as focused controls become hidden behind the sticky content.

This post discusses how you can keep controls behind sticky content visible and usable when they receive focus.

An element's name, or accessible name, is how it's identified. An accessible description provides additional information, about the element, that complements the accessible name.

In this post we explore assigning accessible names and descriptions using HTML and WAI-ARIA.

A pointer gesture is an action a person performs using their finger, mouse, or an assistive technology like a head pointer or eye gaze system to operate a functional control. Some pointer gestures can be difficult or even impossible for certain people to perform, so an accessible alternative may be required.

This post introduces the different forms of pointer gestures and covers how and when to provide alternatives for people who can't perform them.

The Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications specification 1.2, or WAI-ARIA or ARIA for short, is a technical specification written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

In this post we explore what WAI-ARIA is, and how it can enhance the user experience for people using screen readers.

Visible focus styles help us to understand which part of a web page we're interacting with. You may have seen visible focus styles appear as an outline around a link or a button for example.

For people who only use a keyboard to navigate the web, visible focus styles may be one of the few ways to understand where they are in a page and what it is that they are interacting with.

Deciding whether to use native or custom components for a website or web application can have implications in terms of development effort, user experience, and accessibility. This post considers the pros and cons of each approach with a focus on accessibility, and provides guidance on how to choose one.

HTML semantics provide accessibility information about page structure and an element's role, name, and state, helping to convey the nature and purpose of content on web pages.

In this post we explore what HTML semantics are, and how they're experienced by people using assistive technologies like screen readers and speech recognition software.

TalkBack only announces role information for a relatively small number of user interface (UI) elements within native apps. When comparing this behaviour against web content, this can often give the (false) impression that these elements must have been coded incorrectly and therefore need to be "fixed".

This blog post looks at when it is acceptable for a role not to be announced, the roles that TalkBack does announce, and what this means for conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

A list is generally agreed to be a series of words or phrases that are grouped together for a reason. That reason might be to remember the items we want from the store, to share our top five favourite movies, or to write down the steps needed to complete a task.

Most websites have common areas of content like a header and footer, a main content area, and one or more navigation blocks. Sighted people can identify these areas based on the way they're styled and the content they contain, but people who are blind cannot do that quite as efficiently. Landmarks, like headings and lists, offer screen reader users a more comparable experience for identifying and navigating between different areas of content.

Well structured content helps everybody understand and navigate documents. When coded properly in the HTML, headings, lists, and landmarks help people who use screen readers (software that reads what’s on screen) both scan and navigate pages.

Text descriptions are primary content, and when images do not have a text description, anyone who cannot see the image will not know its purpose. This means people may be unable to access content or perform related tasks.