WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: ARIA tab interface

for

From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Oct 17, 2019 3:48PM

Is there a reason not to show anything prior to choosing a tab? Users who are familiar with the tab panel pattern (either from other websites or just desktop apps) will expect something by default - that's just how tabbed panels historically are implemented. Additionally, the tab pattern has a good deal of overhead to implement it correctly (http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#tabpanel).

It makes sense in the context of things like a control panel or different facets of related data. But if you're doing something different enough that it won't even *look* like a tab panel, chances are you want to implement a different, and possibly simpler, pattern, such as the disclosure described at http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#disclosure. Or if the sections are mutually exclusive, maybe an accordion: http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#accordion.

A tabbed view might be perfectly valid in terms of WCAG, but it's nontrivial to implement a tab panel properly (if you declare it as a tab panel, it has to act like one or else it *will* fail WCAG), and your visuals might be confusing to users who are sighted but use a screen reader.