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Does the <body> rule the mind or does the mind rule the <body>?

Accessibility Issues concerning Windows High Contrast Mode

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And in the darkened underpass
I thought oh God, my chance has come at last
(but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask)

The Smiths, “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”

There is more to Web Accessibility than screen readers and machine readability. One of the more excotic topics there is user preferences via operating system or user generated style sheets. The more commonly known was introduced by Microsoft with Windows 7:

Windows High Contrast Mode (Win HCM).

Proposal for a more accessible Download Link

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And people who are uglier than you and I
They take what they need, and leave

The Smiths, “A Roush And A Push And The Land Is Ours”

If you want to offer downloadable files to your user, how do you perfectly wrap those for all of them? Just putting a hyperlink around a file name seems so outdated. With modern HTML5, this can be made much better and more accessible.

An accessible microinteractions button

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Any man could get used to
And I am the living sign

The Smiths, “Vicar In A Tutu”

Microinteractions consist of the subtle feedback moments in small single tasks, for example a light switch. The light bulp itself returns the feedback immediately after the switch is used. Another example might be vibrating cellphones when you receive a message. This haptic feedback is so powerful you even feel it, if the phone is in your pocket.

Breadcrumb trails – come in and find out

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Call me morbid, call me pale
I’ve spent six years on your trail

The Smiths, “Half A Person”

Since 1995 web usability expert Jakob Nielsen recommended the use of breadcrumb trails as a secondary navigation scheme to help the users find their way through a complex website. And he can’t be wrong 22 years later as websites became more complex with different ways of navigation (e.g. off canvas menus, tabs, collapsibles, parallax scrolling etc.) and an uncountable number of different devices have access to them nowadays. Still they help users in those modern times.

A styled accessible file upload

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I could have been wild and I could have been free
But nature played this trick on me

The Smiths, “Pretty Girls Make Graves”

To style especially the file upload is a real complex issue and you might stumble upon things like the Shadow DOM or Web Components, stuff that a regular frontend guy like me doesn’t want to be bothered with. But in the world of HTML5 and CSS3 we have been given enough power to get that fixed.