Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] CSS inert (Issue #1055)

alice left a comment (w3ctag/design-reviews#1055)

I need to step away from this for a bit; it's been exceptionally stressful trying to engage on this topic when there doesn't appear to be a genuine effort made to understand and engage with (not just rebut) the feedback others and I are giving on accessibility.

Some brief thoughts, however:
- HTML `inert` was never meant to be a one size fits all solution.
- However, it was designed carefully to try and mitigate the worst accessibility risks.
- A one size fits all solution is most likely not a good idea; solutions more tailored to specific problems are going to be easier to reason about regarding trade-offs, easier to design in such a way that they match up with the desired visual appearance in each case, and less likely to come with the type of accessibility risks we're seeing here.
- Anything which impacts the accessibility tree _without impacting visual appearance_ needs to be very, very carefully approached, and that care has absolutely been and continues to be absent here.
- This is doubly true in the context of CSS, which is a truly brilliant system which was specifically designed _for changing the visual appearance of HTML content_.
- Yes, this is still true even when the property in questions impacts interactivity.
- The name `interactivity` doesn't even make clear that it _will_ affect the accessibility tree, just for starters.
- Just because content isn't `interactive` doesn't mean it isn't _critical_, and an author might even deliberately make critical content non-`interactive` for similar reasons to why authors make content `user-select: none`.
- Consider how this may be misused by authors who aren't "well intentioned" or who are even "well intentioned but in a hurry/ignorant/misguided" and/or lack accessibility testing resources.
- Consider the _unintended_ use cases as well as the intended ones. What might authors use this for "off-label" without fully understanding the implications?
- Consider how this may be misused in AI-generated code.
- A note in the CSS spec can and likely will be ignored by the vast majority of authors.
- This is likewise true for the best written CSS Tricks or web.dev article.
- Authors will learn primarily through trial and error, and their trial will absolutely not, in the majority of cases, include testing with assistive technology or, in all likelihood, the keyboard.
- Actively pushing authors away from rather than towards carefully designed native options like `<dialog>` and `popover` seems like a regressive move, especially for accessibility.
- Please, please, please slow down and listen to what others are saying about the accessibility risks.

(I'm copy-pasting this comment in a few places because this conversation has been so widely distributed. I apologise for the noise.)

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