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Skill S09 · Vitrine — Accessibility Auditor

/accessibility-pass

A hands-on keyboard, focus, naming, announcement, motion and contrast check, verified in a real browser.

Before shipping any interface, or when asked to fix accessibility.

Every check below says how to verify it. Reading the code is not verification; use a real browser (Playwright, or the browser tools you have) and observe.

1. Keyboard walk

  • Load the page, click nothing, and press Tab repeatedly from the top. Record each focused element: document.activeElement tag, role and accessible name.
  • Pass when: every interactive element is reached, in reading order, and nothing that isn't interactive takes focus. No focus trap except inside an open dialog.
  • Operate every control with the keyboard only: Enter and Space on buttons, arrows in tabs, radios, sliders, menus and listboxes, Escape to close anything that opens.
  • Composite widgets (tabs, menus, listboxes, grids) should be one Tab stop with arrow keys inside (roving tabindex or aria-activedescendant).
  • Pass when closing a popover, dialog or menu returns focus to the control that opened it, and deleting or moving an item leaves focus somewhere sensible, not on <body>.

2. Focus is visible

  • For each focused element, take a screenshot or check computed styles. There must be a visible indicator with at least 3:1 contrast against its surroundings.
  • Use :focus-visible, so mouse clicks don't leave rings but keyboard focus always shows.
  • Pass when you can always tell where focus is from a screenshot alone.

3. Names, roles and states

  • Query the accessibility tree (Playwright's page.accessibility.snapshot() or getByRole lookups).
  • Pass when:
    • every control has a role and a name that says what it does ("Delete Q3 roadmap", not "button" or "×")
    • icon-only buttons have aria-label
    • toggles expose aria-pressed or aria-checked, and disclosures aria-expanded
    • the current page or step is marked with aria-current
    • inputs have real <label>s, and errors are tied to them with aria-describedby
  • Images: decorative ones have alt=""; meaningful ones say what matters in them.
  • Headings form an outline (one h1, no skipped levels for structure), and landmarks exist (header, nav, main, footer).

4. Changes are announced

  • Anything that changes without a page load (a save, a toast, a filter count, an upload finishing, an error) must reach a screen reader.
  • Verify by finding the live region (role="status" or aria-live="polite", or role="alert" for errors) and checking that its text changes when the event happens.
  • The text should make sense on its own: "3 edits not saved", not "Error".

5. Motion

  • Emulate prefers-reduced-motion: reduce (Playwright: reducedMotion: "reduce" on the context) and reload.
  • Pass when:
    • large movement, parallax, autoplay and looping animation stop or become fades
    • nothing depends on motion to be understood (a state shown only by an animation needs a static equivalent)
    • timers that expire (toasts, undo windows) can be paused by hover or focus, or extended
  • If the component takes a motion="reduced" prop, check both paths.

6. Contrast, zoom and text

  • Check text contrast from computed colours: 4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text (24px, or 18.66px bold) and for UI boundaries and icons that carry meaning.
  • Colour is never the only signal: errors say so in words, and statuses have a label or icon.
  • Zoom to 200% (or set the viewport to 640px wide at DPR 2). Pass when nothing is cut off or overlapping, and there's no horizontal scroll for text content.
  • Set a 24×24px minimum for touch targets, or give smaller targets enough spacing.

7. Report

For each failure: what it is, where it is, how you verified it, and the fix. Group by severity:

  • Blocks use: can't reach or operate something.
  • Hard to use: confusing names, lost focus, missing announcements.
  • Polish.

Fix what you can, then re-run the checks that failed and say so.

Featured

01Glassbreak ButtonA solid plate that fractures from one impact point, cracks racing outward as the shards drift apart.04Liquid GlassA capsule of glass that bends what's behind it, carries a specular highlight around its rim toward your pointer, and squashes like a drop of liquid when pressed.07Phosphor Glass ButtonA liquid-glass pill that senses you coming: its rim light turns to face the cursor and the pill leans in to meet it.08Iris ShutterAn async button with a camera iris for a status light — blades close and turn while it works, then open onto the result.
81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components