Calendar controls, date pickers, date widgets, whatever you call them, however they are described, they follow the same basic principle – present the user with a calendar to enter a date (and sometimes a time). By Adrian Roselli.
The problem is that nearly every implementation of a date picker is a barrier for some set of users. I can comfortably say every one that I have seen is a problem, though perhaps there is a wonderfully robust one somewhere. Even the ARIA Authoring Practices, which is more comfortable with imperfect patterns, has not deigned to create a date picker.
The article describes author’s findings about usability and date pickers:
- Challenges – been testing with users for about 20 years (so far)
- Accessibility
- Validation
- An alternative to date pickers
- Text field
- Text field with messaging
- Places this will not work
There are plenty of situations where a plain text field (with or without the messaging feature I prototyped) will not work.
If you need to see chosen dates, unavailable dates, weekends, holidays, date spans, date ranges, dates where counts from start or end dates matter, and so on. Read this interesting post to learn more about accessibility challenged with input forms!
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