WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Notification banner with interactive link

for

From: glen walker
Date: Oct 11, 2018 12:52PM

Sounds like you have a toast message. This was discussed on this forum
about a year ago, along with songs about toast.

https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=8468

My personal feeling about toast messages is that they should only be used
for non-important messages and that if ignored, don't hurt anything. I use
Microsoft Outlook on a PC as an example. When I get a new email, a toast
pops up but I can ignore it if I want. I don't lose any info by ignoring
it because I can go to the app and see if I have new email. However, there
are some nice settings with the outlook toast that I can change, such as
how long the message is displayed and the opacity. I can also associate a
sound with getting new mail so I don't even have to see that there is a
toast message.

Given the limited info for your situation, it's hard to say if you have an
accessibility problem or not. Is the link that appears important enough to
let the user know about it (aria-live)? Can other things appear for 3-5
seconds too? Can you control how long it appears? Does it have any
focusable/interactive elements? Where does it appear in the tab order? If
any of these issues apply, then maybe a toast message isn't the right UX.

Glen