Category Accessibility

Websites aren’t just meant to look good — they are meant to be easy to use for everybody: people who rely on speech, are color-blind or live with dementia. There is no such thing as a normal user, or average user: keeping our content accessible to whatever comes into user’s way is critical for keeping content future-ready.

The Holy Grail Of Reusable Components: Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, And NPM

by Oliver Williams

11 min read
No meows just yet

July 16, 2018 — This article looks at augmenting HTML with components that have built-in functionality and styles. We’ll also learn how to make these custom elements reusable across projects using NPM.

24 more articles

Chris Ashton wrote

I Used The Web For A Day With Just A Keyboard

July 4, 2018 — Many of us are taught to make sure our sites can be used via keyboard. Why is that, and what is it like in practice? Chris Ashton did an experiment to find out. Read More…

Steven Lambert wrote

Designing For Accessibility And Inclusion

April 9, 2018 — The more inclusive you are to the needs of your users, the more accessible your design is. Let’s take a closer look at the different lenses of accessibility through which you can refine your designs. Read More…

Harris Schneiderman wrote

Enter The Dragon (Drop): Accessible List Reordering

January 30, 2018 — There are tons of drag-and-drop list reordering modules out there today, very few of them are built with accessibility in mind. Dragon Drop seeks to fill this gap by providing means for all users to perform this somewhat common task. Read More…

Nick Babich wrote

How To Use Underlined Text To Improve User Experience

December 13, 2017 — (This article is supported by Adobe.) Traditionally used for emphasizing key text, underlines have found a place in online experience, too. In this article, we’ll find out when and why underlines should be used in our digital products. Read More…

Heydon Pickering wrote

Building Accessible Menu Systems

November 23, 2017 — There are lots of different types of menu on the web. Creating inclusive experiences is a question of using the right menu patterns in the right places, with the right markup and behavior. Read More…

Tom Graham & André Gonçalves wrote

Stop Designing For Only 85% Of Users: Nailing Accessibility In Design

October 23, 2017 — The visual interface is an obvious place to begin digging into accessibility. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most common visual impairments, focusing on color-blindness to explain how you can make small changes to your workflow and products to ensure you’re not … Read More…

David Pasztor wrote

Combining Graphical And Voice Interfaces For A Better User Experience

October 19, 2017 — With the appearance of voice user interfaces, AI and chatbots, what is the future of graphical user interfaces (GUIs)? Don’t worry: Despite some dark predictions, GUIs will stay around for many years to come. Let … Read More…

Tomomi Imura wrote

Building A Simple AI Chatbot With Web Speech API And Node.js

August 7, 2017 — Using voice commands has become pretty ubiquitous nowadays, as more mobile phone users use voice assistants such as Siri and Cortana, and as devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home have been invading our living rooms. These systems are built with speech recognition … Read More…

Lyndon Cerejo wrote

Designing Voice Experiences

May 3, 2017 — Voice-based interfaces are becoming commonplace. Voice assistants such as Siri and Cortana have been around for a few years, but this past holiday season, voice-driven devices from Amazon and Google made their way into millions of homes. Recent analysis from VoiceLabs … Read More…