Anti-Patterns

What is an anti-pattern?

An anti-pattern is “a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive” (Wikipedia).

In the context of accessibility, these are common development and design patterns that:

  • can interfere with accessibility (e.g. inline styles which can interfere with a user's custom stylesheet)
  • are, by nature, difficult to implement in an accessible way (e.g. carousels, custom tooltips).

Often there is a known, more effective, and accessible solution.

In this section: