A practical checklist for focus indicators

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. Run through this the next time focus indicators comes up.

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The checklist

• Removing the focus ring breaks the site for keyboard users
• A custom indicator is fine, no indicator is not
• Focus-visible gives you the best of both
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

Why it matters

Removing the focus ring breaks the site for keyboard users. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

How to tell if yours is fine

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. Three things worth confirming about focus indicators before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A custom indicator is fine, no indicator is not — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.