How to create accessible buttons in HTML

Published on 7/6/2023, 12:00:00 AM

Accessibility was always important, but lately it gained even more traction and if you don’t know how to create accessible websites, you can’t really call yourself a good frontend developer. That’s a bold statement, I know, but it’s true, just deal with it.

Today we’ll look at one of the most basic elements of any website - a button. How to make it accessible? Without further ado - let’s just jump into it.

First and foremost - use a button tag. Why? Why not a div for example? Here you have a few reasons button tag is the better choice:

  1. It’s semantically correct. Semantic HTML is really important, it helps with code readability and also helps web crawlers better understand our website.
  2. It’s focusable and clickable by default. You don’t need to implement those behaviours (but if you use some CSS frameworks that reset styles for every element - remember to implement hover and focus states)
  3. It’s recognisable by screen readers. When you use any of the screen readers it will announce the button tag as, well, a button.

Is that it? That would be great, wouldn’t it? But no, next thing we need to talk about is button content. Here we can go three ways:

  1. Text
  2. Icon + text
  3. Only Icon

Text buttons

In this case the best thing we can do is to just use the text that is self explanatory. We don’t need to put any additional attributes to make this kind of button accessible. There can be occasions where you’d be tempted to use aria-label to “overwrite” the text on the button. I strongly recommend you not to do it - it is against one of the WCAG principles.

NOTE: You can check all the code that I use in this article here: Codepen

<html lang="en">
  <body>
    <button>This is a test button</button>

    <!-- incorrect -->
    <button aria-label="This is a different button">This is another button</button>
  </body>
</html>

Icon with text buttons

The second case - icon with text is also quite simple. We can actually use the same technique as for the simple text, but with one additional thing - we’ll need to add aria-hidden=true attribute for the svg icon. This way screen readers will ignore the icon and read only the text.

One thing also worth doing is to add focusable=false attribute as some of the old browsers focus on svg for some reason.

<button>
	<svg class="svg-icon" viewBox="0 0 20 20" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false">
		<title>The icon</title>		
		<path d="M9.719,17.073l-6.562-6.51c-0.27-0.268-0.504-0.567-0.696-0.888C1.385,7.89,1.67,5.613,3.155,4.14c0.864-0.856,2.012-1.329,3.233-1.329c1.924,0,3.115,1.12,3.612,1.752c0.499-0.634,1.689-1.752,3.612-1.752c1.221,0,2.369,0.472,3.233,1.329c1.484,1.473,1.771,3.75,0.693,5.537c-0.19,0.32-0.425,0.618-0.695,0.887l-6.562,6.51C10.125,17.229,9.875,17.229,9.719,17.073 M6.388,3.61C5.379,3.61,4.431,4,3.717,4.707C2.495,5.92,2.259,7.794,3.145,9.265c0.158,0.265,0.351,0.51,0.574,0.731L10,16.228l6.281-6.232c0.224-0.221,0.416-0.466,0.573-0.729c0.887-1.472,0.651-3.346-0.571-4.56C15.57,4,14.621,3.61,13.612,3.61c-1.43,0-2.639,0.786-3.268,1.863c-0.154,0.264-0.536,0.264-0.69,0C9.029,4.397,7.82,3.61,6.388,3.61"></path>
	</svg>
  Button with icon
</button>

Icon buttons

The third case - icon only button is also pretty straightforward. We can just use aria-label on the button tag and the screen readers will ignore everything that’s inside the button (so in this case - an icon). We don’t even need to add aria-hidden=true on the icon.

<button aria-label="Like">
	<svg class="svg-icon" viewBox="0 0 20 20" focusable="false" width="40px">
		<title>The icon</title>		
		<path d="M9.719,17.073l-6.562-6.51c-0.27-0.268-0.504-0.567-0.696-0.888C1.385,7.89,1.67,5.613,3.155,4.14c0.864-0.856,2.012-1.329,3.233-1.329c1.924,0,3.115,1.12,3.612,1.752c0.499-0.634,1.689-1.752,3.612-1.752c1.221,0,2.369,0.472,3.233,1.329c1.484,1.473,1.771,3.75,0.693,5.537c-0.19,0.32-0.425,0.618-0.695,0.887l-6.562,6.51C10.125,17.229,9.875,17.229,9.719,17.073 M6.388,3.61C5.379,3.61,4.431,4,3.717,4.707C2.495,5.92,2.259,7.794,3.145,9.265c0.158,0.265,0.351,0.51,0.574,0.731L10,16.228l6.281-6.232c0.224-0.221,0.416-0.466,0.573-0.729c0.887-1.472,0.651-3.346-0.571-4.56C15.57,4,14.621,3.61,13.612,3.61c-1.43,0-2.639,0.786-3.268,1.863c-0.154,0.264-0.536,0.264-0.69,0C9.029,4.397,7.82,3.61,6.388,3.61"></path>
	</svg>
</button>

This is definitely the simplest and most supported solution. But what are the alternatives?

First one would be creating a sr-only or visuallyhidden class in your CSS and then using to create an “invisible” label. TailwindCSS defines sr-only class as follows:

.sr-only {
	**position: absolute;
	width: 1px;
	height: 1px;
	padding: 0;
	margin: -1px;
	overflow: hidden;
	clip: rect(0, 0, 0, 0);
	white-space: nowrap;
	border-width: 0;
}

When you have this class in place you can then use it like this:

<button>
	<svg class="svg-icon" viewBox="0 0 20 20" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false" width="40px">
		<title>The icon</title>		
		<path d="M9.719,17.073l-6.562-6.51c-0.27-0.268-0.504-0.567-0.696-0.888C1.385,7.89,1.67,5.613,3.155,4.14c0.864-0.856,2.012-1.329,3.233-1.329c1.924,0,3.115,1.12,3.612,1.752c0.499-0.634,1.689-1.752,3.612-1.752c1.221,0,2.369,0.472,3.233,1.329c1.484,1.473,1.771,3.75,0.693,5.537c-0.19,0.32-0.425,0.618-0.695,0.887l-6.562,6.51C10.125,17.229,9.875,17.229,9.719,17.073 M6.388,3.61C5.379,3.61,4.431,4,3.717,4.707C2.495,5.92,2.259,7.794,3.145,9.265c0.158,0.265,0.351,0.51,0.574,0.731L10,16.228l6.281-6.232c0.224-0.221,0.416-0.466,0.573-0.729c0.887-1.472,0.651-3.346-0.571-4.56C15.57,4,14.621,3.61,13.612,3.61c-1.43,0-2.639,0.786-3.268,1.863c-0.154,0.264-0.536,0.264-0.69,0C9.029,4.397,7.82,3.61,6.388,3.61"></path>
	</svg>
	<span class="sr-only">Like</span>
</button>

And as you can see and hear - it works as expected (I strongly recommend you to try focusing on the buttons with VoiceOver turned on - it really helps understanding the things that we are doing here).

Another solution is a little bit more complicated. We need to use aria-labelledby on the button and then provide a hidden label inside. Be aware that even though the label will be hidden, labelledby attribute will still be able to access it.

It would look like this:

<button aria-labelledby="likeBtn">
	<svg class="svg-icon" viewBox="0 0 20 20" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false" width="40px">
		<title>The icon</title>		
		<path d="M9.719,17.073l-6.562-6.51c-0.27-0.268-0.504-0.567-0.696-0.888C1.385,7.89,1.67,5.613,3.155,4.14c0.864-0.856,2.012-1.329,3.233-1.329c1.924,0,3.115,1.12,3.612,1.752c0.499-0.634,1.689-1.752,3.612-1.752c1.221,0,2.369,0.472,3.233,1.329c1.484,1.473,1.771,3.75,0.693,5.537c-0.19,0.32-0.425,0.618-0.695,0.887l-6.562,6.51C10.125,17.229,9.875,17.229,9.719,17.073 M6.388,3.61C5.379,3.61,4.431,4,3.717,4.707C2.495,5.92,2.259,7.794,3.145,9.265c0.158,0.265,0.351,0.51,0.574,0.731L10,16.228l6.281-6.232c0.224-0.221,0.416-0.466,0.573-0.729c0.887-1.472,0.651-3.346-0.571-4.56C15.57,4,14.621,3.61,13.612,3.61c-1.43,0-2.639,0.786-3.268,1.863c-0.154,0.264-0.536,0.264-0.69,0C9.029,4.397,7.82,3.61,6.388,3.61"></path>
	</svg>
	<span id="likeBtn" hidden>Like</span>
</button>

Setting the id on the span is important because that’s how we can access the label from the labelledby attribute.

All three solutions work the same. That’s why my favourite is just setting the aria-label, it the simplest solution.

These were the most important accessibility adjustments you can make to ensure your buttons work well with screen readers. But what about people with visual impairments that do not use screen readers? Here we have two additional things to take care about and we’ll be all set.

Sizing

First let’s talk about sizing. In the WCAG guidelines there is a criterion 2.5.5 - Target Size. It’s described as follows:

The size of the target for pointer inputs is at least 44 by 44 CSS pixels.

There are few exceptions and you can see those on the screen now, they are not relevant in this specific case.

A11Y

So let’s ensure that our buttons are in fact big enough. I’m not a fan of using pixels, I’d much rather go with rems or ems. This will also help if the user changes his base font size - the button will still be sized properly.

button {
  min-height: 3rem;
  min-width: 3rem;
}

I used 3rem as usually the root font size is 16px, so 3rem gives us 48px. But if the user zooms in to, let’s say, 24px, the button will be larger.

Ok, with that out of the way - let’s handle the last thing I want to talk about today - contrast.

Contrast

WCAG guidelines say:

The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 - for AA success criterion, and 7:1 for AAA criterion.

The best tool to use here is contrast checker by WebAIM https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

You can just put your button color there and you’ll get the text color and vice versa. Simple, yet great tool. In the case of my examples let’s say I wanted a green buttons.

Contrast Checker

As you can see white text fails all of the criteria, but black should be OK. As you can see while I’m scrolling through the colors the contrast ratio changes and also different criteria are passing. With straight black we get a contrast of over 10 to 1. So that’s going to work!

And that’s it! Those are the things that you can do to make your buttons accessible. I hope you liked it, if you did - consider following me on Twitter, Dev.to and LinkedIn, more frontend and accessibility related content is on the way.

A11YACCESSIBILITYHTML

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