Feedback at the point of action

An action should confirm its result at the triggering control, without shifting the layout, and announce the outcome to assistive technology.

MicrointeractionsSupportedPriority 2

Sources

EmpiricalRensink et al. (1997)
Changes outside the focus of attention are difficult to notice, even when large; distant feedback may go unseen.
“Identification of changes becomes extremely difficult, even when changes are large and made repeatedly”Abstrak
StandardW3C (2024)
Status messages must be announced to assistive technology without moving keyboard focus.
“status messages can be programmatically determined through role or properties such that they can be presented to the user by assistive technologies without receiving focus”SC 4.1.3 (AA)

Priority

Combines attention, layout shift, and accessibility; distance and layout movement can be measured directly.

Experiments

002Feedback at the triggerCompleted

Findings

Supported

Replacing a button label in place while reserving its width put confirmation exactly where attention was focused (0 px), caused no layout shift, and remained announced. Toasts were announced too; their weakness was distance (419–966 px from the button) and obscured content on narrow screens. A width-unreserved label shifted neighboring content 20 px without registering as CLS.