Accessible rich-text editing in practice
Engineering
An accessible form around an inaccessible editor is still inaccessible. What we tested, what we fixed, and what we gave up.
Brian Kiptoo
Product Designer
1 min read
On this page
The editor is the most keyboard-heavy screen we ship. We tested it with a screen reader and without a mouse before we tested anything else.
The toolbar is a toolbar
It has role="toolbar", every button has a text label, and active formatting is announced with aria-pressed.
Save states are announced
The save indicator is a polite live region. You hear “Saving…”, then “Saved” — or “Save failed”, with a way to retry.
Accessibility is a property of the whole flow, not of the components.