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Reflections on the 2022 Web Almanac’s accessibility findings

Noted by on his .

I have a few thoughts on these findings:

  1. The Almanac says skip links commonly skip to the <main> element; I consider large focusable containers an anti-pattern since they ruin keyboard navigability, and recommend skipping to a heading instead.

  2. The Almanac identifies accessible live regions by role="live". I’d suggest also looking into role="feed", which represents a common type of live region.

Some common accessibility issues I’d be interested in for future editions:

  • Contrast that’s too high
  • Setting custom foregrounds but not custom backgrounds, and vice versa
  • Removing link underlines
  • Focusable containers
  • Using icon fonts without accessible names

Overall, it’s a good look at the small subset of accessibility issues that are automatically detectable (most of which are far less critical than manually-detectable issues).