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Re: wondering about radio buttons and check boxes

for

From: Max Starkenburg
Date: Mar 24, 2024 3:23AM

*TL;DR:* I think techniques like those in the article can be accessible
(happy to be corrected), and prior to today I hadn't previously tried
appearance:none for something similar, but my initial testing with it was
promising, including possible benefits over the article's technique, though
more testing would be prudent.

*Long-winded version:*
I've used similar techniques as described in the article to style
checkboxes/radios differently from browser defaults in the past, though
with some different CSS (e.g. I wouldn't have used opacity:0, on the
assumption, perhaps false, that it might hide things from some AT, instead
using a "visually-hidden" mixin; and I didn't use SVGs, instead relying on
the label's ::before and ::after pseudo-content to indicate :checked
status). I also didn't mess with appearance:none then (since input was
already visually hidden, and I'm guessing it was less supported back then).

One limitation of that technique (that I don't think the article explicitly
mentions) is it requires the input to precede the label in order to work
(otherwise input:checked + label or similar forward-looking selectors can't
effectively update the custom styling to reflect :checked status). So the
technique may be useless if dealing with opposite or unpredictable DOM
order.

IIRC during a later a11y remediation effort, none of my custom styling
negatively affected keyboard or screen-reader functionality (though I may
have had to adjust :focus styling to make that visibly clearer, given the
visually-hidden input). Though I'd be happy to be disabused of any false
sense of security of the relative accessibility of this technique. I also
wasn't aware then or now of notions that the technique was a kludge, but
may simply not have been in the right circles or paying attention.

Regarding appearance:none (which I haven't used much in general), I did
some quick & dirty checking today to see if I couldn't recreate the
behavior/styling I used on that old project, but this time with
appearance:none and without visually-hidden techniques. I also tried adding
the pseudo-content to the input this time (instead of the label), which
seemed to work fine in all the browsers I checked (this surprised me, but
it may be just an exception for appearance:none inputs
<https://stackoverflow.com/a/36073063/5285945>). I then tested mouse
clickability of the inputs, their keyboard navigability, and screen reader
navigability. On Windows I checked in FF/Chrome/Edge (and used NVDA), and
on Mac I checked in FF/Chrome/Safari (and used VoiceOver). I found no
behavioral differences between my custom inputs and default/unstyled ones.
Nice!

Two additional benefits of appearance:none: (1) potentially no longer
worrying about DOM order, given the apparent (but maybe tenuous?) support
for pseudo-content in inputs with appearance:none, and (2) the non-hidden
input retains the ability to use a browser's default focus rings (I saw
them present on all the browsers I tried, nicely surrounding the custom
appearance).

Then again, I certainly didn't check all browsers or AT, with mobile
devices notably absent from my testing. And the MDN page on CSS appearance
includes a kinda ominous (if potentially outdated?) warning about testing it
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/appearance#sect1>
thoroughly on different browsers.

Max
--
Maxwell M. Starkenburg
<EMAIL REMOVED>



On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 2:22 PM < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> The following article made me recall a discussion here several years ago
> that covering up traditional radio buttons and check boxes with custom
> designs is a bit of a kludge. Is that still the consensus?
>
>
> https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/how-to-make-custom-accessible-checkboxes-and-
> radio-buttons--cms-32074t#page-content
> <https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/how-to-make-custom-accessible-checkboxes-and-radio-buttons--cms-32074t#page-content>
>
>
>
> That has also gotten me to wonder about the relatively new CSS technique of
> setting "appearance: none" to create some opportunity for making these
> controls more attractive and standardized across platforms. I can no longer
> see the screen enough to tell whether these techniques really work. Would
> like to hear your thoughts . It seems to me that these techniques could
> have
> a lot of appeal to Web designers and developers.
>
>
>
> Jeff Gutsell
>
>
>
> > > > >