I just got asked a very interesting question: let’s say you want to create a really stunning website and part of that is that you change the mouse cursor to various custom cursors, like arrows, pointers, crosses, buttons, whatever, when you move it around or hover over things.
How can you make sure the website is still accessible? Given the website is still fully keyboard-accessible, is there anything particular to consider – like fallbacks, user-specific settings, etc? 🤔
@matthiasott My main question is, Stunning for who?
I don’t mean that as a gotcha. Consider what you intend to convey with those customizations, and who might (or might not) benefit or be bothered by them. Try to be specific with what you want, and be realistic about who is affected and how.
@matthiasott You can't. Pointers are universal system components that people themselves might override by choice for accessibility reasons, and there are also different system cursor designs. If you choose to override this with your own, you will break what most people know and some people need to use your thing.
@kc Yes, that’s also what I thought. What I don’t know though is whether a custom cursor would override user-specific settings or if users could actually override the custom cursors with e.g. scaled-up system cursors…?
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