Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Building the Web that Works for Everyone

Chapter Fifteen. Checkboxes, Radio Buttons, and Star Rating

Thanks to widespread adoption of web standards and advanced CSS techniques, most interface components in modern web designs now have a customized look and feel, with rich color palettes and dimensional background images that tightly integrate with the overall visual style of the site.

Form checkboxes and radio buttons, however, are a stubborn exception to the rule. They’ve lagged behind, primarily because only a few browsers have built in support for styling these elements with CSS. To further complicate matters, browsers render checkboxes and radio buttons slightly differently in terms of size, spacing, and appearance.

For many, including most of our clients, the usability features ...