WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: tabs vs windows

for

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Aug 19, 2014 9:38AM

That doesn't help keyboard/speech recognition users, though, because they
still have no visible indicator.

A lot of the problems with modals/lightboxes/etc. are screen reader-based,
with the code not having the appropriate ARIA to report that the JavaScript
dialog is now open. But many of them are problems for keyboard users,
people with small viewports such as mobile devices, and mouse/touchscreen
users who have trouble hitting small controls, so those users would also
like to know if a link is going to open up a modal.

(All of those problems are easily fixable, of course.

* Make sure no JavaScript windows take up more than 100% of the current viewport
* Make several methods of exiting the dialog, such as hitting Escape or
clicking/tapping outside of the dialog, and not just a small and hard to
see "X" in the top right corner.
* Make the keyboard focus start at the beginning of the dialog, and -- with
very rare exceptions -- trap the keyboard focus in the JS dialog.
* And of course, have the appropriate WAI-ARIA to report the new screen to
screen reader users.

But the fact is even sites that theoretically carry about accessibility
don't tend to bother to do all of these things.)

Deborah Kaplan

On Tue, 19 Aug 2014, Greg Gamble wrote:

> Won't the tag ARIA role=dialog tell a browser if a modal opens up?
>
>
> Greg
>
>