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Re: Managing disabled state of buttons

for

From: glen walker
Date: Jan 22, 2019 5:58PM

This is a common subject discussed here on WebAIM, IAAP/Communications, and
the accessibility slack channel (web-a11y.slack.com).

The gist of most of the discussions is to try to avoid disabled buttons and
just handle a button selection with proper error checking. That is, rather
than disable a button until all form elements are filled in (or whatever
causes the button to be enabled), let the user select the button and then
tell them what has to be filled in before the info can be submitted.
Providing that information as instructions elsewhere on the page is a good
idea too.

If a button has to be disabled, screen reader users still have several ways
to discover the button even if it's not in the tab sequence. Using the
up/down arrow keys, you can walk the accessibility tree and discover every
element on the page. Using the 'B' quicknav key, you can access every
button, whether disabled or not. Related to that, using ins+shift+b with
jaws will give you a list of buttons on the page. You can navigate by form
elements, again whether disabled or not. On iOS you can set your rotor to
"buttons" then swipe up/down to navigate among all the buttons. So there
are lots of ways to discover a disabled button besides tab order.

So the first choice is to try to avoid disabled buttons. Secondly, if it
has to be disabled, don't fret over it. It's still discoverable.

Glen


On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 2:30 PM Jeff Gutsell < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> When disabling standard buttons, I know that we are encouraged to use the
> standard html attribute instead of "aria-disabled." However, I am puzzled
> about the best approach for making a disabled button discoverable by a
> screen reader. This button is not in the page's tab sequence, and perhaps
> sometimes that does not matter.
>
> I am working on a page where the users will wonder what to do if they do
> not
> know that certain buttons exist. Among other things, they may be unaware of
> navigating over such buttons.
>
> Jeff
>
> > > > >