Focus indicators: the questions we get asked most

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. The questions about focus indicators that come up most often on our calls.

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Do we need to care about this?

Removing the focus ring breaks the site for keyboard users. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions.

How do we know it is working?

Focus-visible gives you the best of both. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The short version

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. Three things worth confirming about focus indicators before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Focus-visible gives you the best of both — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.