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Announcement

Let’s support inert!

By: The A11Y Project Team. Published: .

Table of Contents
Status: $830 matched!

HTML's inert attribute has great potential to make the web more accessible. Declaring inert on an element will remove its interactivity and make it unable to be focused.

Update: The Open Prioritization initiative chose :focus-visible. Thank you to all of those who participated.

The short version

The long version

This experiment represents a rare opportunity for a community to help encourage features they need, versus what browser manufactures believe they want. One thing the digital accessibility community needs is easier focus management.

Focus management is the practice of setting what someone can and cannot navigate to via keyboard focus, which is the core of how many forms of assistive technology operate.

Focus management is a complicated thing to do properly, requiring a lot of deep, careful, nuanced work in JavaScript. Many developers don’t bother doing it because of the level of effort it requires, and those who do still sometimes accidentally don’t get it completely right.

For digital accessibility, the ability to use inert means significantly lowering the level of difficulty it takes to do things like focus management.

How you can help

At the time of this post, inert has a little over $13k USD raised for its $48k USD goal. While this might seem daunting, remember that it’s nearly 30% funded.

This is a rare moment where we as a community can make a meaningful contribution to a significant feature that will have longterm positive effects for web accessibility. If you have wanted to help out with accessibility but have been unsure of how to go about it, this is a great way to do so.

Pledge

With pledge matching, your money will be incredibly effective in helping move funding along. $5, $10, $25. Your pledge doesn’t have to be a lot. Every little bit adds up and helps move things forward.

When you have made a pledge, let us know via our contact form and we’ll match it.

A maintainer will reply via email to confirm we matched the amount you pledged. If you want, the A11Y Project will also add your name and contact information to this post listing you as a supporter.

If Igalia’s goal of $48k is met your pledged amount will be debited. Also consider offering to match the amount you pledge. This gesture will help spread awareness.

Organization matching

Consider asking your employer if they’ll match your pledge as well. This will be a force multiplier for reaching Igalia’s goal.

Also consider asking your employer if they’ll match The A11Y Project’s $1,000 pledge. Being able to use inert means developing accessible interactive experiences becomes significantly cheaper and easier to make. A $1,000 pledge could translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars of saved development time down the line.

The A11Y Project will also publicly thank organizations who match our pledge via our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, as well as list them in this post.

Share

We understand that money is tight for many communities and companies right now. Sharing is a way you can help without needing to use your funds.

Sharing this announcement increases the chances more people become aware of it, which increases the chances that donations are made.

Thank you for considering this initiative, and for your generosity.

Contact us to tell us about your pledge.

Thank you

Thank you to the following people for their generous donations: