We took some accessibility training here recently at IBM. The trainer was blind, and was bouncing around from site to site using a screen reader. When he landed on IBM's site, the screen reader started reading the large hero image, but was shortly cut off by some massive full screen modal. Mid sentence it started to pick up what was in the modal. He didn't realize that he was even in a modal until I told him. It wasn't until then I realized how disruptive and inaccessible they could be (on our own damn site, no less).

I wish (well-intentioned!) rant-pages like these would provide literal, real-world examples of when modals are used incorrectly, as opposed to lazily writing up a bullet list with things like "used too much." Everyone one of those 'reasons' can be justified as appropriate in particular use cases. Without context/scenario to tackle, it's all just very shallow and reductive.

That said, cool style

Modals are the crutch of the inarticulate designer and developer.

K

Anyone know where I can read this in legible format?

Comment

BbB

I think he makes really good points and I liked the suggestions for alternatives. I worked on a project that relied a lot on Modals early on because of the design framework we inherited. It started with a single modal for settings, but then relied on modals opening modals out of necessity. It quickly became "modal inception" as he said. One modal could be ok, but it can quickly become untenable.

How the hell do you evened the article to decide if his arguments even sound in the first place? Someone needs to take a refresher course on when to use trendy designs and when to just use Medium and publish the article in a clear, concise manner.

Slack's modals break most of the rules outlined in this.