It’s a common design pattern, seen multiple times a day: a thumbnail image and Headline, both linked to the same URL. We’ve seen this pattern for so long now that most sighted users know, instinctively, that clicking on either the thumbnail or the Headline takes them to the same location. However the code developers use to achieve this is a bit of a mess, and for non-sighted users or keyboard-only users, the User Experience (UX) leaves a lot to be desired: duplicate links announced for each article, and excessive tabbing through the content. It would appear that either aria-hidden="true" or role="presentation" should be able to help out here.

HTML5 has added a number of new element attributes, including 12 attributes used when creating forms. These Common input element attributes include 2 new Boolean attributes, the required attribute and the readonly attribute. Recently a number of current browsers have implemented native support for the ‘required’ attribute, and so I thought it woulde be useful to examine this attribute in more detail.