Confidently build out accessibility-focused form design systems that works in all browsers.

Stephanie Eckles

Accessible Cross-Browser CSS Form Styling

Learn how to progressively style a responsive landing page template while building your knowledge on when to select grid or flexbox for any layout scenario.

Create a Landing Page with CSS Grid and Flexbox

Build a blog with 11ty and style with Sass.

Build An Eleventy (11ty) Site From Scratch

Techniques to improve your CSS, Sass, and HTML implementations for everyday scenarios.

Learn the Fundamentals of CSS and Sass to Create Modern and Responsive Layouts 

A video series with enhanced transcripts to help beginners learn the essentials of HTML and CSS.

learnfromsteph.dev

A tutorial series exploring modern CSS solutions to old CSS problems.

moderncss.dev

A modern CSS showcase styled by community contributions

stylestage.dev

 Courses from Stephanie Eckles

Bite-size video tutorials for badass web developers.

egghead

See how to include our custom Twitch scenes in [OBS](https://obsproject.com/download), including adding and positioning video and display capture areas. This step includes having our Twitch scenes project running in the background.

Setup Custom Twitch Scenes in OBS

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

Using the open-source project ComfyJS, display a response to chat commands overlaid on the Twitch scenes. We'll use Eleventy templating to create a partial holding the initial command HTML. Then, using [the cicada principle](https://lea.verou.me/2020/07/the-cicada-principle-revisited-with-css-variables/), we'll enable visuals of each command word to appear in a seemingly random order across the scene. We'll use the `ComfyJS.onCommand` method to enable cloning the command template nodes and adding them as the commands are triggered through Twitch chat. CSS transitions will be used to apply a fade and zoom in/out effect for the added command nodes.

Respond to Twitch Chat Commands With Scene Elements and ComfyJS

To embed Twitch chat, we'll use the open-source project [ComfyJS](https://github.com/instafluff/ComfyJS) which is a JavaScript API to interface with the Twitch API. It offers features like responding to incoming chat messages and chat commands and other events like new subscriptions.

Using ComfyJS, we'll set up a section in the Twitch scenes to show incoming chat messages. This lesson covers the CSS needed to style the chat messages and make older ones scroll out of view once new ones are received. We'll take advantage of Eleventy templating to include the necessary scripts.

Embed Twitch Chat in Scenes Using ComfyJS

Cascading Style Sheets bring order and beauty to our applications.

Add three Twitch scenes for preshow, host, and main, and style them using CSS. Learn how to include transparent background areas with CSS gradients that will mask capture areas for a webcam and desktop display.

Create Twitch Scene Templates and Style

Eleventy was created to be a JavaScript alternative to Jekyll. It’s zero-config by default but has flexible configuration options. Eleventy works with your project’s existing directory structure.

Eleventy uses independent template engines. We don’t want to hold your content hostage. If you decide to use something else later, having your content decoupled in this way will make migration easier.

11ty

Our Twitch Scenes will use the static site generator Eleventy (11ty) to leverage templating features for creating the scenes. This lesson covers the base project which is available in the project repo under `/lessons/00-base`.

This lesson includes templating for the stream details and initial styling of the details section within the scene layout. The primary templating language in use is [Nunjucks](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/templating.html).

Setup Eleventy Project for Creating Twitch Scenes

Forms are one of the most common features of a web application. They are also a common cause of headaches. The controls you use, the markup for the structural layout, and the styling all have to be considered.

What you build can look and behave differently depending on the browser being used, and how you build it can impact the accessibility of your application.

Stephanie Eckles has prepared several lessons that work through the creation of a complete form demo featuring the most common controls with a variety of attributes.

You'll create semantic fieldsets, add responsive styles without media queries, and prepare styles for accessible validation.

The demo is built with Sass and Eleventy. Don't worry if you don't have prior experience with these tools— Stephanie's code and explanations make it easy to follow along, and additional resources are available if you need them.

Sass is the most mature, stable, and powerful professional grade CSS extension language in the world.

scss

Learn the essentials of enabling semantic form validation HTML and styles in preparation to use our form design system with the validation solution of your choice.

We will add an SVG to our form descriptions when the error class is applied and look at a workaround to style the SVG through a Sass function.

Create Accessible Styles for Invalid Form Fields

WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. 

aria

Sometimes it's beneficial to add more context for a form field than can be provided by the label. In this lesson, we'll create the `.field-description` class to enable an additional field description. And we'll learn how to ensure users of assistive technology also receive the description in context by associating the description to the field with `aria-describedby`. This text span can also be used to provide validation messages.

Create and Style an Accessible Field Description

Let's add a key missing element to our form design system - the submit button! Learn how to reset browser styles, and use our theme system to create accessible styles across `:hover`, `:focus`, and `:disabled` states.

Create Custom CSS Styles for Form Submit Buttons

Often we can improve the user experience by grouping related fields, such as first and last name. In these cases, it's appropriate to include `<fieldset>`. We'll first learn how to semantically create the fieldset HTML. Then, we'll set up a series of scalable classes that are flexible for various layout configurations. The layout classes will also be intrinsically responsive - meaning, they will respond to their parent container _or_ the viewport without the use of media queries!

Define Semantic Fieldset HTML and Create CSS Styles For Responsive Form Layout

In the last two lessons, we set up the initial state styles for radio buttons and checkboxes. Now we'll add styles for the focus and disabled states using our existing Sass mixins. We'll do this by layering box-shadow effects of a white border and blurred primary color.

We'll also learn about an up and coming pseudo selector - `:focus-within` - that will be used to apply styles to the label of a control in a `:focus` state.

Create Custom Radio Button and Checkbox CSS Styles for Focus and Disabled States

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999. SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files.

svgo

This lesson will focus on creating the checkbox styles for both the default and checked state. We'll make sure our styles are accessible and able to use our theme system.

We'll get started by adding an inline SVG to our input which we can style. I'll give you a tour of what is happening with the SVG and show you how to display it in the checkbox by providing a width. From there we will set the default state of the SVG to a `scale(0)` and set up a transition so when the checkbox is clicked to scale the SVG to 1.

Create Custom Checkbox CSS Styles with SVG

We'll setup the layout structure for our custom radio button and checkbox styles using CSS grid. These input types will share the `.form-control` component styles. This lesson will apply the initial styles to prepare for creating custom visual control styles.

Similar to focus states for selects, we will need to add a wrapping span and nested span to our radio buttons and checkboxes to apply visual styles to these native elements.

Create A Layout Structure with CSS Grid For Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

This lesson will focus on styling the radio button styles for both the default and checked state. We'll make sure our styles are accessible, including print-friendly.

We'll use the `::before` selector to apply a box-shadow that we'll inset and apply our primary color to so that we can visually indicate which radio button is selected. When doing this, this style will initially be applied to every radio button element. We fix this visual appearance with an initial transform of `scale(0)` and  then applying a transform `scale(1)` to the `input:checked` selector.

Create Custom Radio Button CSS Styles

In the previous lesson, we set up the initial state styles for form selects and multi-selects. Now we'll add styles for the focus and disabled states, inclusive of a workaround necessary due to the lack of a parent selector in CSS.

The way we will get around this for our focus styles is to add a sibling span element to apply the styles and position those styles on top of the Select element.

Create Custom Select CSS Styles for Focus and Disabled States

We'll begin to apply our theme styles for our text inputs by creating the `.form-field` component. We'll make use of the Sass feature of "mixins" to create `:focus` and `:disabled` styles that can be reused. While creating the `:focus` and `:disabled` states we'll discuss the importance of contrast and keyboard access for accessibility.

An important take-away is that you need at least a 3:1 contrast ratio between your border and background AS WELL AS a 3:1 contrast ratio between your border and focus state.

Use Sass Mixins to Style Inputs with Accessible Contrast and Keyboard Access

Using modern CSS and in particular CSS grid and `clip-path` we can define cross-browser compatible custom select CSS styles inclusive of the dropdown arrow. We'll continue ensuring all styles are re-themeable by using the Sass functions we've already created within our form design system. We will style both the default single select, and a multi-select using `multiple`.

Create Custom Form Select and Multi-select CSS Styles

HTML 5 is the structure of our web pages. It is the markup that represents the DOM (document object model).

html

We'll round out the HTML for our form fields by adding radio buttons and checkboxes, including each in a checked, unchecked and disabled state. You'll learn about best practices for both field types semantically as well as when to use each.

Radio buttons should be used when you want a single selection out of a set of options while checkboxes should be used when you want multiple selections out of a set. A key difference between radio/checkbox and other inputs is that you wrap the label around the options which creates a direct relationship between the label and input so a `for` attribute is not strictly necessary.

Create Semantic, Accessible HTML for Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

Learn how to begin addressing browser inconsistencies by resetting base styles across text inputs, textareas, and selects. We'll also review a few quirks related to mobile browsers and responsive design when dealing with form fields. And we'll uncover how to normalize `<select>` which was formerly one of the trickiest fields but is vastly easier now thanks to modern CSS through the `appearance` property.

Create Reset Styles to Normalize Form Fields Cross-Browser

Continuing on from our text inputs, we'll make our next field type including a select with the `multiple` attribute. Additionally, we'll include these fields in a disabled state. Both types will use the `.form-group` created in the previous lesson for a touch of layout styling.

You'll notice the same pattern here as with text inputs in that to make select inputs fully semantic and accessible you will need to add a `for` attribute that matches the `id` of the select element

Create Semantic, Accessible HTML for Form Selects

We'll make a starting point for our form layout styles by creating `.form-group` which will add a bit of `margin` between fields. This will be our first design system component, and we'll also include styles for the `label` contained in this class.

Create the `form-group` Component Styles

Mock Service Worker is an API mocking library that allows you to write client-agnostic mocks and reuse them across any frameworks, tools, and environments.



Mocking WebSocket APIs with Mock Service Worker


When attempting to load the same module twice in JavaScript you'll hit a cache and code won't re-run. In scenarios where you actually do want to have state in your modules, you'll have to use a cache-busting technique by passing a query parameter to a dynamic import. This lesson walks through how to add a query parameter, how to add the appropriate types for loading dynamic modules in TypeScript, and when these techniques are valuable.

Import the Same JavaScript Module Multiple Times with Cache Busting



The include keyword in GitHub Actions empowers you to add custom variables to your matrix strategy, providing flexibility beyond standard configurations. In this video, we'll explore how include allows you to define specific combinations of variables, enhancing control over your workflow runs. You'll see how this feature enables you to tailor jobs for unique environments or scenarios not covered by the default matrix options. By leveraging include, you can efficiently manage complex build processes with greater precision. This technique helps you streamline your CI/CD pipeline, making it more adaptable to your project's evolving needs.

Use GitHub Actions Matrix Include for Complex Job Configurations

While running `zod` schema validation agains domain-rich objects, the error message saying that _a string is not a number_ might not be really useful.

Especially, when you need to provide a meaningful feeback to the user, e.g. after they have submitted a form with lots of data.

`zod` allows to customize messages on a very granular level. We can also extract repeatable customization to `zod` error maps.

Finally, in order to process an error message further (e.g. display it to the user), we need to handle the `zod` validation errors effectively. Especially, when a big object validation has failed and we could receive a handful of errors.

That's what we learn in this lesson. 🔥

Customize zod Error Messages and Handle zod Errors Effectively

customize zod validation messages, customize zod schema property messages, reuse error maps across different schemas, navigate through zod error objects

You might want to run `zod` schema checks in different styles.

Sometimes you prefer to conditionally throw the error - that's what `parse` does. But another time you'd prefer to receive a `boolean` property that determines whether the validation was successful or not - and perform further actions accordingly.

Additionally, the error-throwing API of `parse` works extremely well with [TypeScript assertion functions](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release-notes/typescript-3-7.html#assertion-functions). Their combination is just... perfect! 👌

That's what we learn in this lesson.

Use parse and safeParse Runtime Type-checks with zod

use zod parse function to conditionally throw ZodError, use zod safeParse to get a boolean value and run typescript type guard over success property

In this lesson we learn that TypeScript cannot guarantee correct shapes of responses. That's due to TS performing checks in compile-time, while the response will be availbale in runtime - when TS doesn't exist anymore.

In some situations, such as HTTP requests, runtime type checks such as `zod` are essential for providing quick feedback around data-related errors.

Understand where are the possible mistakes to make while using TypeScript with HTTP calls. Use `fetch` and `axios` along with `zod` schema checks.

Also, note that similar mistakes or mistakes could happen while using web storage (e.g. `localStorage`)

Validate HTTP API Response with zod, fetch and axios

use zod as an HTTP response validation tool along with fetch and axios in order to make sure that the response has expected data structure

In this lesson we learn that the `zod` schemas become the single source of truth.

We shall not update TypeScript types manually, since they are generated automatically from the schema.

Same with validation functions.

Whenever the schema changes, all the rest will update accordingly. It's an important mind shift.

Treat zod Schemas as Single Source of Truth

Zod Schemas are the single source of truth for both typescript types, and interfaces - and runtime validation functions. Schemas should be updated first.

`zod` is powerful, but writing the schemas manually for existing JSON objects, especially big ones, can be time-consuming.

But that's what `quicktype` is for! You can get 80% work done instantly! 🥳

Depending on your need - whether you want to automate the process, or do it just one time, you can:
- use an online app
- use an IDE extension
- run a CLI script
- generate a script to be executed within CI/CD environment/tooling

And this is what we learn in this lesson! 🔥🔥🔥

Get started with zod quickly!

Generate zod Schemas Automatically using Quicktype App, Extensions and Scripts

Use quicktype app, extension or scripts to automatically generate zod schemas from existing json files. Save time and get started with zod quickly!

`zod` is a powerful library allowing to run runtime type-checks.

It's complementary to TypeScript, which does type checks in compile time.

In this lesson we create few schemas that represent primitive type values, along with `zod` utilities which make these more precise. We also create object schemas and nest one inside another.

All schemas are being validated against example values. We analyze how to interpret error messages in case of failures.

Perform Runtime Type-checks on Primitives and Objects with zod

Create zod schemas to validate primitive type and object type values in runtime. Analyze the errors to see how a value doesn't correspond to schema expectations


Using Cursor Chat, you can easily reference an entire directory of files and ask it to generate anything based on those files. This opens up the possibility of using your current code as a reference guide to create new code that follows existing patterns. With this approach, the result can be a polished prompt you can use with any AI to generate consistent and reliable output.

Focus less on crafting the perfect prompt upfront - what matters most is testing and iterating based on the AI's responses. The more results you see from the prompt, the more you can reinforce the good results and prune out the bad results until your prompt is polished enough that you can rely on the prompt to give you consistent quality results.


Stephanie Eckles

Accessible Cross-Browser CSS Form Styling

Featured Resources

Stephanie's Projects

learnfromsteph.dev

moderncss.dev

stylestage.dev

Create a Landing Page with CSS Grid and Flexbox

Build An Eleventy (11ty) Site From Scratch

Learn the Fundamentals of CSS and Sass to Create Modern and Responsive Layouts

Search Results

Setup Custom Twitch Scenes in OBS

Respond to Twitch Chat Commands With Scene Elements and ComfyJS

Embed Twitch Chat in Scenes Using ComfyJS

Create Twitch Scene Templates and Style

Setup Eleventy Project for Creating Twitch Scenes

Accessible Cross-Browser CSS Form Styling

Create Accessible Styles for Invalid Form Fields

Create and Style an Accessible Field Description

Create Custom CSS Styles for Form Submit Buttons

Define Semantic Fieldset HTML and Create CSS Styles For Responsive Form Layout

Create Custom Radio Button and Checkbox CSS Styles for Focus and Disabled States

Create Custom Checkbox CSS Styles with SVG

Create A Layout Structure with CSS Grid For Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

Create Custom Radio Button CSS Styles

Create Custom Select CSS Styles for Focus and Disabled States

Use Sass Mixins to Style Inputs with Accessible Contrast and Keyboard Access

Create Custom Form Select and Multi-select CSS Styles

Create Semantic, Accessible HTML for Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

Create Reset Styles to Normalize Form Fields Cross-Browser

Create Semantic, Accessible HTML for Form Selects

Create the `form-group` Component Styles