Hiding content untangled: Hiding vs. moving out of the visible viewport

This blog post is once again prompted by something I encountered in the wild. The other day, I was testing browserid.org‘s account manager for accessibility and encountered some inconsistencies in keyboard navigation and screen reader usage. For one, there are “edit” buttons next to the “Your E-Mail addresses” and “Password” headings whose usability wasn’t obvious to me. To my screen reader, the “remove” buttons next to the e-mail addresses linked to my account, as well as the two password entry fields, were visible without me having to actually press these “edit” buttons at all. I could perform all actions without a hitch, so these buttons seemed superfluous and just adding noise. Secondly, even when just navigating through the page via the tab key, I couldn’t find anything that these “edit” buttons could be used for.

tagged with: #Css, #Displaynone, #Hidingcontent, #Negativepositioning