Accessible Textboxes

It may surprise a lot of people that you can make editable textboxes without JavaScript and without using <input type="text"> or <textarea> tags.

Why would you use the ARIA method? I can see two reasons:

1. Maybe because you can't use ::before or ::after pseudo-elements to style form elements, although there are other ways around this without using ARIA.
2. If you wanted to create a WYSIWYG editor then you would have to do this, since form elements don't allow the editing of formatted text.

This last use case we do not cover, since creating an accessible WYSIWYG editor would involve quite a bit of JavaScript (I will be adding a page in Enable about WYSIWYG editors in the future).

HTML example

This is the best solution to use, especially when building from scratch.

ARIA example

Recommended only if you needed to create a JavaScript WYSIWYG editor.

Keep in mind that if you use this in a form, none of the nice free form functionality (e.g.: HTML5 validation, inclusion of data when submitting a form in an HTTP request, etc), won't work. These example do, however, show up in Voiceover's Rotor and NVDA's Element Dialogue.

• No JavaScript was involved in making these (you would need to use JavaScript, though, to make a true WYSIWYG editor).
• The first example is simply a div with its contenteditable attribute set to "true". Textareas can be simulated using aria-multiline="true" and using CSS resize: both to make them resizable.
• The element will not submit its data to the server like a real form field.

Textbox With Character Counter

The character counter is visible at all times. It is announced to screen reader users when:

1. They use the keyboard to access the textbox (e.g. using the TAB key).
2. When there are n characters left before the textbox is filled, where n is either 20 (the default value) or the value used in the textbox's data-warning-threshold attribute.

The character counter uses a JavaScript library to implement it. Below is the HTML markup needed for it to work, as well as instructions on how to load the library in your own projects.

Installation Instructions

You can load this JavaScript library into your application in serveral ways:

• as an ES6 module using Webpack.
• as a CommonJS module using require() and Webpack.
• as a native ES6 module within the browser.
• as an old-school ES4/JavaScript library.

If you haven't done so already, choosing which you should use is obviously a major architectural decision. Here are a few articles that will help you decide:

• Jan Olaf Krems gives a great overview of the JavaScript File Format Differences
• Joe Honton discusses that With ES Modules and HTTP/2 You May Not Need Webpack Anymore
• Stack Overflow has a really good thread about Webpack vs ES6 modules as well.

Using NPM/Webpack to load ES6 Modules:

1. Install the enable-a11y NPM project.
2. Edit your webpack.config.json file to resolve the ~ modifier by adding the following:
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   module.exports = { ... resolve: { extensions: ['.js', '.jsx', '.scss', '.css', '*.html'], modules: [ path.resolve('./src/js'), path.resolve('./node_modules') ], alias: { '~enable-a11y': path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/enable-a11y') }, ... }, ... }
3. You can use the module like this:
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   // import the JS module import enableCharacterCount from '~enable-a11y/js/modules/enable-character-count'; // How to initialize the enableCharacterCount library enableCharacterCount.init();

Using NPM/Webpack to Load Modules Using CommonJS Syntax

1. Install the enable-a11y NPM project.
2. You can import the module using require like this:
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   var enableCharacterCount = require('enable-a11y/enable-character-count').default; ... enableCharacterCount.init();

Using ES6 modules natively.

This is the method that this page you are reading now loads the scripts.

1. Grab the source by either using NPM, grabbing a ZIP file or cloning the enable source code from github.
2. If you want to load the module as a native ES6 module, copy js/modules/enable-character-count.js from the repo and put them in the appropriate directories in your project (all JS files must be in the same directory).
3. Load your scripts using the follwing code (NOTE: you must use <script type="module">):
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   <script type="module"> import enableCharacterCount from "path-to/enable-character-count.js" enableCharacterCount.init(); </script>

Using ES4