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)

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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