Archive for November 9th, 2009

Defining Focus Styles for Web Accessibility

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Most CSS hackers are familiar with Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset. Most are also familiar with Zeldman’s “LoVe? HA!” mnemonic to remember the pseudo-classes for anchors, :link, :visited, :hover, and :active.

But what you might not be familiar with is the comment at the bottom of Meyer’s Reset block: “Remember to define focus styles!” Of course, you never remember. But you should, and you should do it like this:

a:hover,
a:focus,
a:active {
  ...
{

Now you’ll also need to change the mnemonic to “LoVe? H-Fa!” as if burping while laughing. And when screen readers target your anchors they light up as if the mouse was hovered. For a great example, implement this setting in Safari Preferences > Advanced > “Press tab to highlight each item on a webpage.”; then take a look at Roger Johansson’s website and use Tab to reach every corner of his website.

Web Accessibility, yo. Because it makes you seem like a frickin’ ninja.

Safari Preferences Advanced

Short URL: http://jwr.cc/x/1f