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Re: Should disabled elements receive tab focus

for

From: Mallory
Date: Oct 28, 2016 3:50PM

" So the low vision user is forced to try and figure out what in the
form is needed to make that disabled control enabled so they can read it
only to find out it wasn't something they wanted anyway."

This would be a case where designers, developers, info architects ought
to be coming up with better ways of getting necessary information to the
user. Or, if the necessary info is only in a faint disabled control,
that means something to fix.

Though yeah, we often don't have the above luxury :)


On Fri, Oct 28, 2016, at 06:42 PM, Sailesh Panchang wrote:
> Designers / developers need to review when it makes sense to include
> disabled controls in the UI. For instance in the page navigation
> links, the 'Next' button can be disabled and yet be rendered visually
> when the last page is in view. It becomes conspicuous by being absent
> in the tab order then!
> On the other hand dependent controls generally should be hidden if
> they are disabled. It makes for a cleaner uncluttered UI for everyone.
> Please review
> http://www.mindoversight.com/csun/2016/Overview.html
> and example for poor design- disabled controls.
> Thanks,
> Sailesh
>
>
> On 10/28/16, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> >> So in the situation where there are two combo-boxes and a submit button on
> >> a page, and the second combo box has no choices until the first combo box
> >> has a selection made would you want that second combo to be in the tab
> >> order? We were talking about adding a aria-disabled to the second combo
> >> box until there are choices in the it, would make more sense to mark it
> >> completely disabled?
> >
> > I'd say it is best practice to advise the user that changing something in a
> > control will affect/change or add content later/further in the document.
> >
> > Jonathan
> >
> > Jonathan Avila
> > Chief Accessibility Officer
> > SSB BART Group
> > <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > 703.637.8957 (Office)
> >
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