Modal Or Not

Allen Kim
Digital-Heart
Published in
3 min readOct 17, 2018

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Modals are a popular for a good reason: They provide fast, focused, contextual interaction. When it is used, page loading is not necessary when they really need to move the flow forward.

A modal window forces users to complete that action before going back to their current workflow. This makes users more productive because they’re doing one action at a time instead of multi-tasking. Users are less likely to get confused and lost in their workflow because of the control and constraint modal windows have. e.g., “Enter this number to continue”

Many designers criticize modal windows for all the wrong reasons. The problem isn’t with modal windows. It’s with designers using modal windows improperly.

Modal dialog requires attention of accessibility

Modal dialog must fill 100% of the screen, Completely covering the background window also hiding background movement when scrolling according to W3C.

Modal dialog must be focusable and accessible, and accessible descriptions are set based on the contents of each dialog. Userole=”dialog”, aria-modal, aria-hidden appropriately for each modal.

Criticism

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