Hi Miranda thanks for writing this. May I ask some questions on some points that I'm not sure would always work? I might be reading too literally.
Include alt tags on images
Should this be written as alt attributes instead of 'tags'?
If 14px font size is too small, zoom in and it is still too small.
I'm not sure I understand that. Setting font sizes in pixels doesn't restrict the behaviour of enlarging the text when zooming in. Though I think you're right in that it doesn't respond to user preference.
If a drop-down navigation is in use, make the element appear invisible but remain visible to screenreaders
Would it be better if drop-down navigation menus were visible to everyone and not just screen reader users? For instance, if someone used a keyboard and had vision, they'd expect to see the drop-down menu.
A way to solve this issue is by allowing the menu to expand permanently on click.
Sometimes drop-down menus can get in the way of things and I'm not sure expanding 'permanently' would be a good thing. Achieving accessibility for things that appear on hover events is generally quite difficult because things have to be all dismissable, hoverable and persistent, as per Content on Hover or Focus (sc. 1.4.13). Maybe for this Dev.to article you may want to provide another simpler example.
Miranda is a technical writer and product lead at VMware as well as founder of Books on Code, which is a platform for programmers who love to learn through technical books.
Location
San Francisco, CA
Education
MA English Literature
Work
Senior Technical Writer at VMware (previously Pivotal)
To point 1: It may be true that pixels do actually expand when zooming in. I did not test it but took the word of the textbook I had gathered this information. Could maybe rewrite to clarify; I do know that relative sizes are a best practice.
To point 2: It is better to have it be visible visually as well as visible to the screenreader. However, when it is invisible to a screenreader, it is completely inaccessible. Using CSS trickery is not optimal but far preferred. I could maybe clarify this.
To point 3: Perhaps 'permanently' was too strong of a word. Someone ought to be able to toggle. Perhaps the example is too complicated and we easily get into weeds when considering the importance of keyboard focus.
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Hi Miranda thanks for writing this. May I ask some questions on some points that I'm not sure would always work? I might be reading too literally.
Should this be written as alt attributes instead of 'tags'?
I'm not sure I understand that. Setting font sizes in pixels doesn't restrict the behaviour of enlarging the text when zooming in. Though I think you're right in that it doesn't respond to user preference.
Sometimes drop-down menus can get in the way of things and I'm not sure expanding 'permanently' would be a good thing. Achieving accessibility for things that appear on hover events is generally quite difficult because things have to be all dismissable, hoverable and persistent, as per Content on Hover or Focus (sc. 1.4.13). Maybe for this Dev.to article you may want to provide another simpler example.
This is all great! Thank you very much.
To point 1: It may be true that pixels do actually expand when zooming in. I did not test it but took the word of the textbook I had gathered this information. Could maybe rewrite to clarify; I do know that relative sizes are a best practice.
To point 2: It is better to have it be visible visually as well as visible to the screenreader. However, when it is invisible to a screenreader, it is completely inaccessible. Using CSS trickery is not optimal but far preferred. I could maybe clarify this.
To point 3: Perhaps 'permanently' was too strong of a word. Someone ought to be able to toggle. Perhaps the example is too complicated and we easily get into weeds when considering the importance of keyboard focus.