Alerts

✎ Technique: Status messages

Assistive technology users should be able to detect when important changes occur on a web page, With the use of a status message, information can be provided to the user without changing focus or unnecessarily interrupting their work. The following are the kinds of status messages to provide:

  • success or results of an action
  • waiting state of an application
  • progress of a process
  • existence of errors

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✎ Technique: Session extension

For a number of reasons including data persistence, performance and security, it is sometimes beneficial to terminate idle user sessions.

So that users do not lose data, it's important to warn them of a session that is about to expire and give them the option to continue. This is especially true in the case of people who might take longer to read or interact with a page due to a disability. It's important to make such prompts accessible.

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✎ Technique: Form feedback with live regions

Providing form feedback accessibly helps users submit data more accurately and reduces the chance for error. For learning resources, easy access to feedback supports the learning process; for forms collecting data, good feedback helps to reduce the chance of input errors being made. 

When providing feedback on user input, JavaScript is often employed to print messages to the screen. Users looking at the screen will see the message appear in response to their actions. Screen-reader users who do not...

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✎ Technique: Accessible modal dialogs

Modal dialogs can enhance usability by focusing attention on a specific message that requires a user action to continue.

An accessible modal dialog is one where keyboard focus is managed properly, and the correct information is exposed to screen readers. HTML and WAI-ARIA can be used to provide the necessary semantic information, CSS the appearance and Javascript the behavior.

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