[Groxx]

>Toasts pose significant accessibility concerns and are not recommended for use.

yeah. OBVIOUSLY. good fucking riddance.

they wouldn't be half as bad if they always came with a notification center for seeing the ones you missed... but the other half is still incredibly bad and isn't worth using at all.

[Muromec]

>yeah. OBVIOUSLY. good fucking riddance.

Are they really? Isn't it pretty normal "role status aria something something polite" thingy to announce feedback to user?

[JoshTriplett]

Accessibility is more than just screen readers. Toasts are also not accessible for folks with low vision, low peripheral vision, etc. And the time-based disappearance is unpleasant for many people, as one of many examples of "accessibility improvements are also often usability improvements".

A message that you have to explicitly dismiss, and that's stored in a "message history" somewhere, is much more accessible and usable.

[pxc]

> Toasts are also not accessible for folks with low vision

To make this a little more concrete with one example: if you are using fullscreen magnification, odds are toasts will literally never appear on your monitor. By the time you pan over to their little corner of the screen (if you ever do), the toast will be long gone.

[mnhnthrow34]

Can confirm. I zoom and pan on lots of websites in my daily browsing and would have no idea if toasts are popping in and out. I'll notice system level toasts though.

[d3Xt3r]

That depends on the size of the toast, appearance and frequency. We (an MSP) used a Windows toast notification[1] to encourage people initiate the Win10 > Win11 upgrade at their own convenient time (before it gets forced down on them) - and we got a pretty high uptake. The overall feedback from both the project team and users were good: the toast was unmissable, the text explanation was clear, and the big banner image was eye catching.

https://www.imab.dk/windows-10-toast-notification-script/

[Groxx]

If it has all of:

a "big banner image", buttons that are required to interact or dismiss, doesn't go away on its own after only a couple seconds, and might(?) also exist in the notification center

I think it's pretty safe to label that "definitely not a toast". That's just a notification, or maybe a "non-modal alert". Toasts are distinct from those by being brief and ephemeral.

[d3Xt3r]

It is technically a toast, according to Microsoft. If you check the link in my previous comment, the script is using the Windows Runtime Toast Notification API, specifically the Windows.UI.Notifications namespace and the ToastGeneric XML toast template.

You can see the API reference here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.ui.notific...

[Jtsummers]

They also often show up in bad locations, requiring you to dismiss them explicitly so you can continue using other UI elements.

[licorices]

This is sometimes intentional. Some design it that way to ensure that if they are going to do a certain action, that they have seen the toast. Obviously far from being the case all the time, but it happens that it is intentional sometimes.

[Griffinsauce]

That would make it an Alert or Dialog masquerading as a toast, no?

[herpdyderp]

Accessibility doesn't even need to be related to any disability or unusual user requirement. A user-hostile website can be inaccessible even to users with perfect visual and motor functions.

[Muromec]

Okay you are right, timer-adjustable disappearance and history is important too and if it's local to where user's fields of view it's better than a toast every time of the day.

[madeofpalk]

There's no such thing as accessibility. Accessibility is just usability.

Toasts have poor usability because its easy to miss them. This makes them bad for everyone, regardless of screen reader.

[rileymat2]

This is not strictly true some accessibility choices can harm usability for those that don’t need that affordance, if it is not configurable.