Short and Sweet, Accessible Character Counter

Tested with VoiceOver (Safari 11) & NVDA (FF 60)

• Tells user the amount of space left when the field is focussed
• Updates the user periodically while typing

Play around with the demo:

https://codepen.io/rikschennink/pen/LmoJYY

View a video of Short and Sweet with VoiceOver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NDCEvHHaCY (sound is off)

Features

• No dependencies
• Easy setup
• Accessible

Installation

Install from npm:

npm install short-and-sweet --save

Or download dist/short-and-sweet.min.js and include the script on your page like shown below.

Usage

Run short-and-sweet like shown below and pass an element reference or a querySelector. For best performance include the script just before the closing </body> element.

<textarea maxlength="200"></textarea>

<script src="short-and-sweet.min.js"></script>
<script>
    shortAndSweet('textarea', {
        counterClassName: 'my-short-and-sweet-counter',
    });
</script>

The following options are available to pass to the shortAndSweet method.

| Option | Default | Description | | ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | counterClassName | 'short-and-sweet-counter' | The classname of the counter element | | counterLabel | '{remaining} characters left' | The text shown in the counter element, placeholders available are {remaining}, {maxlength}, {length} | | assistDelay | 2000 | The time in milliseconds the assist waits before updating the user with the screenreader user with the current count | | append | (el, counter) => { el.parentNode.appendChild(counter); } | The method used to append the element to the DOM |

Tested

• Modern browsers
• VoiceOver + Safari
• NVDA + Firefox
• IE 10+

Versioning

Versioning follows Semver.

License

MIT