Posandu

Posted on Jul 27, 2021 • Originally published at tronic247.com

Pure CSS checkboxes with one element

#tutorial #beginners #css #checkboxes

Here is a Pure CSS checkbox with only one element. It’s also accessibility friendly.

HTML

<input type="checkbox" data-name="Item 3" class="checkbox">

The CSS

@import url("https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@100;200;300;400;500;600;700;800;900&display=swap");

.checkbox {
    appearance: none;
    height: 100px;
    width: 100px;
    background-image: radial-gradient(circle farthest-corner at 10% 20%, rgba(37, 145, 251, 0.98) 0.1%, rgba(0, 7, 128, 1) 99.8%);
    background-size: 360% 100%;
    border-radius: 4px;
    position: relative;
    overflow: hidden;
    cursor: pointer;
}

.checkbox:after {
    content: attr(data-name);
    top: 50%;
    position: absolute;
    left: 50%;
    transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
    font-size: 16px;
    font-family: "Inter", sans-serif;
    color: #3f3f3f;
    z-index: 99;
    transition: all 0.2s cubic-bezier(0.68, -0.55, 0.27, 1.55);
}

.checkbox:before {
    content: "";
    position: absolute;
    top: 0%;
    left: 0px;
    height: 200%;
    width: 200%;
    background: #e9e9e9;
    z-index: 0;
    transition: all 0.2s linear;
    transform: scale(0.6) translate(-50%, -50%);
}
.checkbox:hover:before,
.checkbox:focus-visible:before {
    background: #cacaca;
    top: -4%;
    left: 20%;
}
.checkbox:checked:before {
    opacity: 0;
    transform: scale(0.9);
}
.checkbox:checked:after {
    color: white;
}
.checkbox:checked {
    box-shadow: 0px 4px 10px -6px black;
}

.checkbox:focus-visible {
    outline: none;
    box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 5px #480f5d;
}

Result

Top comments (21)

Temani Afif • Jul 27 '21

It’s also accessibility friendly --> it's not you that decide about that 😛. I will summon @inhuofficial that will give you some rant 😆

GrahamTheDev • Jul 27 '21 • Edited

Why do I always have to be the bad guy?

Sorry @posandu at 13 years old you are doing amazing, Temani was mean summoning me!

However I won't "pull my punches" due to your age, none of these are criticisms of your work, just things you may not know to look for yet 😋

So here a few things that mean this isn't fully accessible (yet):-

Using colour alone to indicate check state is not enough, you need to account for people who have colour blindness (with that being said I think the difference between the two states would be significant enough but it is still a good practice).
For people with a cognitive impairment it may not be evident that blue means checked. I would suggest adding an icon that changes depending on state or some other method that makes sense (as when all of them are unchecked there is no point of reference for state)
On iphone you get a gigantic tick mark that interferes with the legibility of text (but ironically would work for fixing the above issue). I think this is because you didn't prefix appearance: none for iPhone as I believe it should work when prefixed. (try prefixing it -> -webkit-appearance: none and see if that fixes it)
You need a <label> for your checkbox that is properly associated (preferably with for="idOfCheckBox" as it is more robust than wrapping the input in the <label>) so that people who use assistive tech know what the control is for. The content attribute is not picked up by most screen readers.
In the "unchecked" state there is not sufficient contrast with the background, it needs to be a minimum of 3:1 (add a border maybe?)
Not a fail on WCAG as the animation is short but I would suggest adding prefers-reduced-motion media queries to turn off animations for people who request it, generally people with vestibular orders, anxiety disorders etc. as animation can be unsettling or distracting.
Your text doesn't scale with font size changes. Use rem and em units for font sizes so if a user sets their browser size to large the font scales according.
Your text needs to be larger or you need to darken the blue. At the moment the contrast is only 3.2:1 and the text does not qualify as "large text". It would need to be bold and 18px equivalent (about 1.1rem) or normal weight and 24px equivalent (1.5rem) at the current contrast levels.

That is all I can spot for now! If you need any help understanding any of those points or how to solve any of them just let me know.

And although that looks like a lot of things, most of them are quick fixes and other than the lack of a label this is better than most examples I have seen!

A lot of examples aren't usable with a keyboard whereas yours is so, great job!

For checking colour contrast you can use the WebAim colour contrast checker

Temani Afif • Jul 27 '21

and the community have a lost a young developer ...

🤣

GrahamTheDev • Jul 27 '21

Baptism of fire, if they manage to implement all of those things they are already better than most senior devs and will be a mega star developer!

Temani Afif • Jul 27 '21

they are already better than most senior devs --> hmm, why I have a strange feeling that I am concerned by this 🤔🤔
XX: no, no your are not, keep calm ... Xanti is on vacation now ...

GrahamTheDev • Jul 27 '21

🤣 for once it was an innocent comment, I am not always mean you know!

Posandu • Jul 28 '21 • Edited

Thank you so much @afif and @inhuofficial . (For the tips and etc)

Posandu • Jul 28 '21 • Edited

Thank you very much @inhuofficial I will update this post for your accessibility guidelines.

Posandu • Jul 28 '21

😅

Temani Afif • Jul 27 '21

by the way, you can use codepen to embed to your work here.

Posandu • Jul 28 '21

@afif I'll create a codepen and embed it here.

Martin Romario Ntuwa • Jul 27 '21

You can use codePen to embed the result. You should see what other people are doing with their blogs. Telling people to visit your site is like click bait. I visited your site and the checkboxes are nice, but they're larger than expected. Remember that their main purpose is to send data to the back-end,