WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: [EXTERNAL]How important in practice is WCAG Technique G165: Using the default focus indicator for the platform?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Oct 2, 2019 5:57AM


On 02/10/2019 12:51, Mark Magennis wrote:
> Given that these two techniques are contradictory, which would be your preferred approach? What I'm really getting at is how important is the "high visibility default focus indicators will carry over" consideration?

My personal preference when building my own stuff would be to ensure my
own author-supplied focus indicator. Normatively the focus visible SC
doesn't say what "visible" actually means, so in theory just for that SC
it could be a single faint extra pixel that appears on focus and you
could claim it be a pass. The new 1.4.11 non-text contrast SC will then
force you to (probably, if there's no other indicator) make sure that
single pixel has at least a contrast of 3:1, but that's about it.

So purely within the realm of compliance to WCAG, that's about it.
Anything beyond that is more usability...

(sorry, I know I'm still not answering your core question - which
leaving WCAG completely aside, is more about "this high visibility
platform indicator...is it a thing? is it common?" because I don't have
an immediate answer here - particularly since browers all do their own
thing anyway, and don't necessarily follow platform conventions or
settings in many cases, and if there's AT involved, THAT may force an
additional focus indicator anyway making it irrelevant what the platform
or the page actually does :) )

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke