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Design Crit - Disabled Elements and Accessibility Oct 4 Notes

Design Crit - Disabled Elements and Accessibility Oct 4 Notes

Oct 04, 2016

"P.O.U.R."

  • Perceivable

    • changes of state

    • awareness - know it's there

    • discoverability

    • legibility - no unpleasant side-effects (i.e. flashing)

    • modality independent

    • structures and relationships

  • Operable

    • you can interact with it - you have full range of action to use something

    • modality independent - accomplishing the same function regardless of modality

    • if something is non-operable - it can't be "reached" accessed

    • timing

  • Understandable

    • knowing what something does in its context

      • i.e. what is its scope? what does it act upon?

      • how would this be communicated in multiple modalities? Visually it may be "obvious".

    • issue of cognition - i.e. understanding the text

    • understand what the author intended to communicate

    • consider alternatives to content

    • understandable regardless of experience

    • learnable - something may not be previously experienced. Therefore it should be learnable.

    • as simple / complex as required. No more no less.

    • timing

    • communication of affordances.

  • Robust

    • Doesn't break - flexible, forgiving, recoverable

      • Flexibility example: i.e. postal code or phone number inputs on forms

      • Example of a good implementation: Amazon address change

      • Use a suitable control for constrained input (i.e. use a date picker for dates, and not a text field). Reduce validation and validation errors.

    • Content and controls works across many platforms / technologies ~ "Graceful degradation"

    • States are communicated clearly (i.e. if an error occurs)

    • Survive environmental changes (i.e. changes to screen size, browsers etc.

Issues

  • Placeholder text

    • placeholder should describe the text format

    • problem: placeholder text often used as labels or descriptions.

      • motivation to save some space

    • Proper usage of placeholder text?

      • Disappears after you start entering text

    • What is being communicated by the greyed-out text?

      • Differentiating from text the user entered vs. a prompt.

    • How do ATs handle placeholder text?

      • often gets lumped in with the label, or even substitutes for a label if label is absent.

  • Disabled controls

    • What is being communicated?

      • state

    • Aria states:

      • read-only, disabled, enabled,

Relevant Resources

Notes: