Christian Heilmann

Fixing the accessibility of Inspection overlays

Tuesday, May 17th, 2022 at 3:56 pm

The Inspect tool is a great way to get information about different page elements before selecting then. Once it is enabled, it shows an information overlay as you move from element to element.

Recording of the inspect tool in action

The main problem with the tool is that sometimes it is tough to get the information about the right element, as they are too close together and the information overlay shows the next element once the mouse moved a bit.

Whilst this can be annoying for any user, it becomes unusable for those who need to zoom the interface. In zoom mode, you magnify part of the screen and the magnification window moves with the mouse cursor. As the mouse cursor moves, the information overlay disappears, so you end up in a frustrating endless loop.

We got a report of this as an accessibility issue in Microsoft Edge and fixed it. From Edge 102 onwards, you can now press Ctrl+Alt when you have an information overlay active to stop it from disappearing. This makes this tool also usable to screen magnification users as shown in this screencast. It starts with the current interaction and then shows what happens when you press Ctrl+Alt and move the mouse around.

Information overlay in magnification mode

This also makes it easier for all users to get the information of Elements close to another. As an extra, you can also press Ctrl when you move the mouse around to only highlight the different elements and suppress the information overlay. This cuts down on a lot of noise.

Pressing Ctrl while moving the inspect tool around doesn't show any information overlays

This change shows that by fixing an issue for users of assistive technology, you can make it a better experience for everybody.

The problem has also been filed as a bug on the Chromium project .

Share on Mastodon (needs instance)

Share on Twitter

Newsletter

Check out the Dev Digest Newsletter I write every week for WeAreDevelopers. Latest issues:

Dev Digest 146: 🥱 React fatigue 📊 Query anything with SQL 🧠 AI News

Why it may not be needed to learn React, why Deepfake masks will be a big problem and your spirit animal in body fat! 

Dev Digest 147: Free Copilot! Panel: AI and devs! RTO is bad! Pi plays!

Free Copilot! Experts discuss what AI means for devs. Don't trust containers. Mandated RTO means brain drain. And Pi plays Pokemon!

Dev Digest 148: Behind the scenes of Dev Digest & end of the year reports.

In 50 editions of Dev Digest we gave you 2081 resources. Join us in looking back and learn about all the trends this year.

Dev Digest 149: Wordpress break, VW tracking leak, ChatGPT vs Google.

Slowly starting 2025 we look at ChatGPT vs Google, Copilot vs. Cursor and the state of AI crawlers to replace web search…

Dev Digest 150: Shifting manually to AI.

Manual coding is becoming less of a skill. How can we ensure the quality of generated code? Also, unpacking an APK can get you an AI model.

My other work: