Los botones deshabilitados apestan

Hace unas semanas escribí la entrada ¿Los botones deshabilitados? en la que hablaba del contraste de los botones deshabilitados. Mi consejo final fue:

Por tanto, yo creo que aquí la recomendación de WCAG 2.0 es discutible y sí que se  debería cumplir el requisito mínimo de contraste en los elementos deshabilitados.

Ahora he encontrado el artículo Disabled buttons suck:

Showing buttons as disabled until a form is complete might seem like a good idea. It is not. They usually create a lousy user experience and exclude many people with disabilities. Here’s why disabled buttons suck and what to do instead.

El artículo comenta varios de los problemas que suelen ocasionar:

• They fool users into clicking.
• They are hard to see.
• They don’t give any feedback.
• They give design teams a reason to rush through error handling.
• They make users think.
• Disabled buttons disable disabled users.

[Actualización 1/8/2017]

Un comentario adicional en Disabled buttons don’t have to suck!:

Didn’t read the article? Well, this sums it up:

Disabled buttons often suck because,

• often you can’t really tell if they are disabled, or you won’t be able to read / see the button due to lack of contrast;
• when you (accidentally) click them, you don’t get any feedback, leaving you in the dark;
• assistive technologies like screen readers often won’t be able to navigate to disabled buttons, so they won’t get any feedback on why they can’t find the submit button when they think they are done;

Disabled buttons are useful

What happens when you accidentally press Enter while in a form, if the submit-button is not disabled? Right, it will submit with all kinds of unnecessary errors and messages thrown at the user. Leaving them in confusion and anger. It’s in our muscle memory to press buttons we shouldn’t press.

They also convey useful visual information to (at least some) users that the form is not yet completed or the option is not yet available.

Just make disabled buttons better already

There is no technical boundary for us to improve disabled buttons in order to convey meaning to all (inclusive design). So,

get better contrast by using bigger font and/or darker colors;

Give assistive technologies, like screen readers, some information at the end of the form (visually hidden), since they won’t read information inside the button-tag (it’s often skipped).

give users information when they tap, hover or click the disabled button. Preferably give them directions to the first field that needs input or correction;

Remove the “disabled-attribute” from the button as soon as the last field has