Why you shouldn't use a div for everything - creating accessible buttons and navigations 

I'd love to see more vids on accessibility - it's definitely the only area where I'm not very well versed in.

As a blind developer, I just want to say I love your content and love your focus on accessibility ;__;

Thank you so much for making this. I'm going to share this video with my team because you concisely captured years worth of "learning the hard way" in a short focused video.

As a developer at the beginning of my journey, I really appreciate you reminding us that everyone makes mistakes. I always learn so much from your videos but I especially appreciate how open you are about your process.

With all due respect, screw those people giving you push back on such amazing coverage. We're lucky to have you uploading such wonderfully full and robust content. I think we'd all appreciate you pointing out how to make sites more accessible. I think we all appreciate how you teach the right way, not the fast way.

"It's our job to do it properly" is pretty much how I define my career of coming in to projects that are behind and broken and having to fix them. Thanks for all you do, it helps to know resources like you are out there to direct my developers to for some concise and well built coding examples.

I know, I know, pedantic JS time. That collapsed if statement for controlling the menu feels really wrong to me. I understand why you've done it like that that to a degree, but you could definitely get rid of the if(...); surrounds so that you just have 'isOpened ? closeMenu() : openMenu()'. To me, empty if blocks just make me feel...off, even if it does work perfectly fine. Despite that minor bit, though, fantastic video! Excellent coverage on button and nav menu accessibility. The final bit of pedantry for me would be that maybe you could swap out for ? Apparently might signify to accessibility tools that the s within contain interactable content, unlike the information content of a , but I don't think any tools really care at the moment and according to the MDN it looks like they're both considered virtually identical by the browser. Still, could be something that might become more relevant in the future. Or not.

Mini-course about accessibility would be amazing!

I am pretty sure you don't need the if condition for the ternary operator. so, instead of if(isOpened ? closeMenu() : openMenu()) It should just be isOpened ? closeMenu() : openMenu(). Also I think the closeMenu and openMenu should be the same function with an argument of the true/false Let me know what you think

Thank you for your great tips Kevin! BTW you don't need the "if()" block, 'cause you already used the "?" operator.

Really good to see people A) be willing to admit and address mistakes they make and B) take assistive technology seriously. I'm not good at assistive stuff, but I do care about it and a lot of it is pretty subtle imo, so it's really nice to see it being addressed like this.

Owning up to your "mistakes" and showing why and how to fix them is the definition of a true top level humble dev. You should never be afraid to own up, great work on this video !

I loved looking at the word 'butt' for 5 seconds there (2:46). Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, you just have to learn from them :)

I learned a LOT... Learning from mistakes and fixing them is probably more helpful than perfectly clean tutorials.

When you added your poll, I knew it was this one!!! Who hasn’t done that at some point? My Senior Dev at my first job didn’t care about clickable divs, so I was off to a poor start. I eventually realized it was an issue, but I had a hard time properly evangelizing to the rest of the team. After switching jobs, we’re now extremely a11y aware, and it’s incredible. Really thrilled to see you bringing awareness here! Thank you.

I just graduated college and your videos actually helped me get a job. I’ve been taking everything you say and right notes, and apply it to websites I make for my portfolio. I talk about it in my interviews and got a job as a remote full stack developer who focuses on front end! Thank you so much Kevin! I’ll continue watching your content, to continue learning!

I've seen you use these data and aria attribute selectors in your CSS before, and I feel like it's finally clicked for me as to why this is such a good idea. If I am reading the CSS, seeing that a style is applied when aria-expanded = opened, makes the intent and meaning of that style a lot clearer. Another side benefit of doing things properly.

Also, really appreciate you taking the time to talk about why this is important and that we should continue to try to do better 💪

Thanks, Kevin! Even this turned out to become a more complex video, it's show your progress and how you achieved certain things you would never do the same way. Accessibility today is very important, so thanks a ton for this update and the good work as always.

Great stuff, I love when you talk about accessibility, cause it's one area that I really struggle at! Keep them coming!

I love that you didn't just delete the video and pretend like it didn't exist. Instead, you took the time to make a whole new video explaining why it was a mistake, and how to correct it. Love your channel!

I haven't watched the video yet. I just wanted to say Kevin, you're an amazing resource creating great content. OK now I watch it.

This is a great video! Thanks, Kevin! Not only does it say "Hey, we all make mistakes", but it shows us a great way of achieving a really solid, neat way of approaching accessibility in our designs. And as you say, this may be a lot of work now, but once it has been set up it's there for later. If web technologies improve again, then this can be expanded upon to include those new techniques.

Kevin, this video's title might be very incorrect! When I saw a 30 minute video and the title, I thought I'd watch / skim about 5 minutes of it to find the mistake, but ended up watching the entire thing. It has a ton of value! Thanks!

Kevin this is great! Going back to something you didn't do right and correcting it openly👍

Thank you so much for this. Any job I work, no one cares about semantic HTML or accessibility or basic keyboard user experience. Awesome stuff, please keep doing this!

The only accessibility thing missing from this is what happens if the user doesn't have JS enabled :P. Always have a no-JS fallback as part of accessibility, too. Also, animations are super cool but they need to be able to be disabled from knowing the user's animation preference (prefers no animation). Obviously that is outside the scope of this video's concept, but they are things to keep in mind.

anyone can easy make any design using CSS but these small things is what makes us different from others. Thank you kevin for this awesome channel

Thanks for showing different options and the accessibility coding. I really like that you have the split screen showing the code then what it does in real time. Very helpful.

you Sir teach me that speaking a language doen't mean you actualy know it . watching videos here and there and watching your videos always makes me realise this truth

I also really appreciate to see you admitting to making "mistakes". Although I wouldn't refer to this as a mistake but simply "not the best choice made".

Kudos to you Kevin! The best mistakes are the ones we learn from! And as always, your in-depth explanation of why is very much appreciated! :)

I'm happy when you show that there's more work to this. Take away the marketing reasons and other reasons behind accessibility and the number one reason we should be making our sites accessible is that it includes people. No one likes being left out. So if I have to put a little extra work into a build, or go back and change some things in a build I made, just so a few more people can feel included if they stumble across my site, then that alone should make it worth it. Half the reason I watch your videos is for stuff like this.

I think this is by far my favorite video of yours in recent memory. I would like to see this navigation taken a step further to address the issue of responsive design. My biggest question I was left with was "What happens to the button element when you're on a desktop and how to you address the two different states of the menu in one solution?"

excellent video, i am the worst for taking the easy road when it comes to coding, but since watching your videos and taking a couple courses from you i spend more time analysing what i want to do and building my functionality one step at a time, and i do a lot more testing than i used to, your commitment to perfection is admirable, i am definitely going to incorporate your hamburger methodology in my future products, using the aria with the js code to eliminate css code is very smart, thanks Kevin

Why should you be ashamed? You are learning too. The shame would be if you never really cared. Good work Kevin!

I love that you answer the question "why" ❤️

Amazing video! It helps knowing that even the best make mistakes and are constantly learning. I am not alone in this never ending but passionate walk

Great video! I completely agree with your rant about doing it right being important. Also, one little nit... You don't need a surrounding if statement for your ternary (17:49). You can just use the ternary by itself. But, sometimes lint rules will complain even though it's completely valid. Adding the additional if statement makes it less readable to me since that if statement isn't actually used for anything.

Bravo! This is my favorite RU-vid video this year. Perhaps of all time. Thank you.

Love your work.. I consider myself to be pretty OK with JS and CSS. However, I try to watch at least one of your videos each day. You have great clarity and I always find something interesting.

As someone who primarily works on internal tools that don't face the public I really don't often think of developing for people who need to use assistance tools to get around the web, like someone who is blind. I fully came into this video thinking "who cares about using a div, its not that big of a deal.. you can make it all work the same" and within about 5 minutes realized I was forgetting that there are millions of people who need us to do more for them so they can use our products. Thanks for the great reminder that I need to consider that some people need us to put in a good effort instead of doing things the lazy way.

You can also simplify toggling the menu to: function toggleMenu (isOpened) { menuToggle.setAttribute('aria-expanded', `${!isOpened}`); }

Passing a non-string second parameter to setAttribute() will convert it to a string anyway. So the code around 13:05 can be simplified to menuToggle.setAttribute('aria-expanded', !isOpened); No need for a ternary operator or extra functions for that. It's also worth knowing that there's an optional second parameter to classList.toggle() which can be used to force the addition or removal of the class - making it behave like classList.add() or classList.remove() depending on the value of that second parameter. That would allow you to do something like this: menuToggle.classList.toggle('open', !isOpen); ...without having to worry about things getting out of sync if the menu is already opened when the user clicks. Finally, you should always check the 'animationName' property of the animationEnd event (at 29:34) to make sure your code is only responding to the menu animation, and not any others that might be added to the page. In this case I suspect you could have got away with just using a CSS transition with a transition-delay value on the 'display' property though, without needing to use animations at all.

Amount of knowledge I get from one video is unimaginable 🔥

I have learn something that I really have ignored all the time. Thanks Kevin ❤️

Vim user here and a frontend dev. Thanks for making this video. I was confused when vimium didn't recognised a toggle button which was actually a div.

As others have said, you don't need the if with the ternary inside. You also don't need to create functions to use the ternary, you could have kept the same two lines as the if / else.

I always type something along the lines of elem.setAttribute("aria-expanded", isOpen) And when toggling attributes I do elem.toggleAttribute("aria-expanded", isOpen). This will remove aria-expanded if it's not open, but add it if it is.

Kudos to you for taking the time to actually make a video correcting mistakes and explaining it rather than just pinning a comment with the correction!

😅😅 You have no idea how many sites I have made using divs and spans as button, then add a javascript and cursor pointer. I have learned something new and important. Thanks Kevin!!

Solid video! I just set up a navigation menu today, going to go through it tomorrow with all your points in mind. Thanks!

The issue with the event listener for "animation closed" is that you are creating them everytime you click the button. Even with the once is still there. Other option is to create the listener outside the function so it will only create once. Also if you pass the event as a parameter you might get context on the trigger so the same listener can be used for multiple closing signals

This is already an Amazing series

Unlike display the visibility property is animatable from hidden to visible so the clip-path transition should've worked with that. Although hidden from screen readers it remains in the DOM and has layout.

Kevin! I truly admire how you are passionate about CSS. Everytime I see your videos I learn something new. I wanted to ask, what are some projects that you have worked like websites that are out live today in the real world. You are ledengary.

This is a fantastic video. Making sure our websites are accessible is such an important issue.

Another top notch video from the King. Thank you! Here's my contribution to it: instead of using to list menu items, use , which is the new semantic list wrapper for this purpose.

oh thank you man. I was doing the wrong way by simply adding too many setTimeout and intermediate classes (like closing or opening). My handheld menu bar is a real mess. You are great. Thank you again.

Styling on aria attributes is something I do more and more: it forces you to add accessibility in the code which is a good thing

Wow! Accessible web design! Something that is overlooked by pretty much all “RU-vid web designers”. Thanks for this video! 👍

I'm glad I followed a good developer who is inclusive :)

This. All of this! Thank you Kevin. THANK YOU!

16:20 i really like that idea of using those aria tags, which already carry a semantic meaning.

Good things should soon come to you for doing this. Keep it up Kevin! You should do a summary of interesting not obvious behaviors associated with pure HTML tags and attributes. I bet there is a lot there that developers should be aware of...

My preference when it comes to programming is to go against the convention as a means of security through obscurity, on top of actual security standards. So using the information in the beginning of this video I’ve implemented a custom event that can be added to div buttons and instead of adding it with addEventListener you add it with prepareEventListener and based on which event you pass it, in this case it’s “sitename.interaction” it will set a tab index that’s based on its depth in the dom from body and use it’s innertext node to give it a aria-name property if it doesn’t already have one. And if you pass in a controlled child as an optional parameter it will ensure through setting a custom property if the child hasn’t been prepared or remanipulating it’s tabindex and it’s childrens to ensure they are above the tab index of the parent button, so you can layout your html however you need for zindex purposes and still get desired accessibility features without using the standard button which can be scraped for by general purpose bad actor scripts. Oh and I named the event interaction because it listens for both mouse down and pointer down and whichever event fires first serves the callback assigned and the second event to fire recognizes it’s already being handled which allows for dev tools to switch between emulating a pointer device and normal site without refreshing the page to reinitialize the event listeners based on the user agent or screen size as a fallback

JavaScript Improvements 2: A one-liner to toggle the aria-expanded property (two lines including the isOpen variable declaration) menuToggle.setAttribute(isOpen ? "false" : "true"); No need for extra functions, just one line :D

Great video. Another option to exclude navigation from a11y when it is hidden is to add a new inert attribute.

Great video, always picking up new info, or at least being reminded about useful stuff in your videos. Wondering if you could’ve applied the “inert” attribute to the primary-navigation to remove any possible interaction with it when closed v. display none + animation management? The inert attribute would also encode the state so you wouldn’t need the data-state attribute

Awesome video! I'd love to see more videos on stuff like this!

Happy Holidays Kevin, great video, about my fifth time watching it, always learn something new.

I learned so much from this video. Thanks Kevin!

This is just insane. I can see how solving invisible problems is important. But this is nuts. How many websites actually follow this kind of design?

Accessibility is still a mystery to me, pls could we have a vid on that. Things like the aria, keyboard accessibility, role, building accessible dropdowns, select, popups, modals etc. Would be so grateful 🙏

I commented this, but comment has gone... In this video you introduced a state-machine bug at around 13:30 and then do it more severe at 17:72 . Problem is not big enough in this particular case, but it’s very important when you introduce states and not carefully consider (and it’s easy to learn bad habits than fix these bad habits later on). Later you introduced one more state and didn’t verify or check that previous state machine is actually correct. At the beginning you had transitioning from „open” to „close” (and boolean type is a good enough to hold it), then you introduced „closing” state, but left check as boolean. When doing ANY optimisation, it’s important to repeat loudly: „Preemptive optimisation is evil” and „premature optimisation is evil”. If you do optimisation, do automated (preferably) tests before AND after. It’s very easy to reproduce if you click on menu button fast enough to close and open menu. The transitioning will be visually unpleasant and with a bit more complex state machine it’ll end up in an invalid state. The correct transitioning will be check non-boolean state and do following in on-click event function: * open -> closing * closing -> closing (state changes from closing to close by an event) * close -> open For sake of completeness and to avoid visual flashes (when clicking fast enough), I’d add opening state. What if a clicker scenario like this: „click on menu button, press tab (to select first item), press space (to activate first item), press shift-tab (to select menu button) and press space (to activate menu button)”. I assume here that selected menu item changes content on screen without moving to another page. To avoid such problems in the future, I recommend to create a function `menu_state(current_state)` which do all *state* transitioning and returning new state. On-click listener (in this case) will pass current state and get new one, if state has been changed, only then do a thing. This way a programmer can test state machine and communication with on-click separately. PS: I wasn’t a guy who did a comment you mentioned, but I agree with it PPS: It's better not to permanently delete a video, but add a link for correction to both the description and the pinned comment

I've reviewed hundreds of job applications over the years, and the times I see front-end developers not having the faintest idea what W3C standards are is astounding. Sometimes I see them nesting and together, and similar nastiness. So many people simply don't understand that conflicting interactive elements shouldn't be nested. Many of them don't know there are rules to HTML, and many of them underestimate HTML. I mean, kudos to them for not ONLY using , but when you use semantics... use them correctly.

That's what I was looking for. Bootstrap use this technique in their accordion. Expand -> Expanding -> Expanded.

I used to think that "aria" was a little fancy "alt" .. and then discovered it is mighty powerful

Still waiting for the SASS course, Kevin 😅😅

Excellent video, Kevin. Thanks!

I have 's for breaking, lunch and dinner, man. Don't take away my bread!

Great video as always. Just one note: if you use ternary operator, you don't need to wrap it into another if statement.

You're just an amazing and awesome person and tutor ❤️❤️

Well explained. Thanks for the all the details that are important!

This is the best tutorial video on the internet

aria-controls was only one I didn't know, but... It's cool I learned it after 16y in front end!

Wow, this is one of the most informative videos I have ever watched

Thanks for the video! Great work as always! :)

Nothing wrong with being wrong sometimes. The correction is definitely appreciated! One more question though: couldn't you observe the aria-expanded property for changes and adjust data-state accordingly? I believe new JavaScript includes native Observables. Also couldn't you just delay display: none; using transition, too? And one more: if you open the menu WHILE data-state = closing, it might still never unregister the last event handler you added I believe. Still though: great video and thank you for making CSS more fun!

Just something to note at 17:50, you don't need to wrap the ternary operator in another if statement. Instead of: if(isOpen ? closeMenu() : openMenu()) Just write: isOpen ? closeMenu() : openMenu() The ternary operator is just a shorthand way of writing an if-else statement. A ? B : C A's truthiness is checked. B is executed if A is truthy. C is executed if A is falsy. If you have no "else" condition then you can just do "A && B", where A's truthiness is checked and B is executed if A is truthy.

Instead of display none you can use opacity and pointer event none and keep using the transition for better performance; Also you can use aria-hidden in the navigation when hidden. BTW great video!

I remember doing that… add “cursor: pointer”, add “tabindex” to make it focusable, etc. No need to do much of that these days w/ first class support. Not to mention the impact on screen readers and other assistive tech with the new tags, it really cuts down on effort all around too.

I think CSS property for .site-nav{visibility: hidden} perfect in this case. Because it supports CSS transitions and hides the ability to work with the keyboard. And also frees from lines in script.js I may have missed something, if so, please correct me. P.S.: I always admire open self-criticism on RU-vid. Kevin, you are an amazing person and developer!

thanks for your awesome demo, i actually had that this problem :-D, now i can fix my menu the proper way :-D

Stunning, wanna see more javaScript videos from you.

Amazing video, thank you for your hard work 😁

Built a similiar menu though it was a multi-level menu, without the animations. Same accessibility stuff. One of the functions I used was Element.ariaExpanded instead of .attribute('aria-expanded') and other aria values which MDN documented. Can't remember which one it was, but one of them worked on every browser ... except firefox.

Thanks, Kevin. How easy is it to extend this design to a multi-level menu?

amazing video i didn't know about any of this. time to go back to my site and redesign and redevelop a little bit.

Realy Awsome Kevin. Thak u! Love from Brasil.