It's Alive! Facing The Monsters Of Accessible Live Regions

Imagine this. You wake up as a zombie and need to integrate back into everyday life. But it’s a tough adjustment to make, being undead, as you need to order groceries and stock up on a fresh supply of brains. However, the web is more dynamic than you remember and visual notifications that are now used to communicate updates, errors, and content changes are difficult to understand. If not impossible.

We’ll explore ARIA Live Regions through the eyes of a zombie trying to navigate the modern day web. From creating an account, ordering your favorite snacks, to sending an email, we’ll experience how screen readers understand, or sometimes don’t understand, dynamic content and live region updates. We’ll explore the rules and recommended methods for incorporating live regions to create more inclusive notifications, and ultimately, we’ll find ways to replace live regions all together with more persistent and robust patterns.