Should I disable the control or hide it completely?

Disable to keep a feature discoverable, hide to cut clutter or keep it secret, and watch the accessibility cost of disabled controls.

Disable to teach, hide to declutter

Disable a control when the user should know the feature is there but cannot use it yet (needs a higher plan, has a step left to finish). Hide it when showing it just adds noise, or when revealing it would tip off a role that should not even know the feature exists.

For a [delete] action a [user] cannot perform, should I disable the button or hide it? Walk me through when disabling helps discoverability and when hiding is better because the feature should not be revealed at all.

A disabled control can disappear from assistive tech

A disabled button drops out of the tab order, and screen readers often skip it entirely, so the user never learns why it is off. To keep it focusable and explained, use aria-disabled with a visible reason instead.

What is the accessibility difference between the disabled attribute and aria-disabled on a button? Show me how to keep a button focusable and explain why it is unavailable to a screen reader user.

Disable when the feature should stay discoverable, hide when it should not be seen at all. And watch out: a plain disabled control can vanish from screen readers.

Additional Resources

Explore these carefully curated resources to deepen your understanding and practice the concepts covered in this lesson.

MDN disabled attribute

Documentation

How the disabled attribute changes behavior, focus, and accessibility for form controls.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Attributes/disabled

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