v26.3 | Login Form Phase Out, News & Stories Accessibility, Carrousel Updates, Bug Fixes and More!

Bonjour! Yes, another big release for Planet 4. A bit of security improvements, a lot of accessibility upgrades, the phase out of username/password login form, … There’s a lot going on so as always: Let’s get into it!

Features 🛠️

PLANET-8112 Add option for allowing external domains to CSP headers

Improving website security using a Content Security Policy (CSP). The goal is to tighten security, but still allow trusted external services. So, to support external services while preparing for stricter CSP policies, a new textarea field has been added under Planet 4 > Social: “CSP headers exceptions”. Keep in mind:

You can input external resource domains (one per line)
Only entries starting with “https://” are accepted and processed
Valid entries are appended to the CSP default-src directive

PLANET-8091 Footer block accessibility: Focus is trapped on a hidden close button after opening and closing the drop-down on mobile.

When navigating on mobile, opening and then closing the drop-down used to cause the focus to remain on a hidden Close button. That has changed, and the focus now moves back to the remain interactive elements of the footer after close.

PLANET-8049 Phase out username/password login form

The login page we’ve known for years is no more! The login now redirects directly to the Google SSO login button for staff. (For external users of Planet 4, a temporary Okta account can be created.)

PLANET-8017 News & Stories page accessibility: Add screen-reader-only H2 Filtered results before the filtered posts

A screen-reader-only H2 “Filtered results” has been added, immediately before the results container. So heading navigation lands at the start of the updated results.

PLANET-8015 News & Stories page accessibility: Change Apply button text to Apply filters

More accessibility changes: The label has been changed from just “Apply” to “Apply filters”, to make it less generic and making it clearer on what the button does.

PLANET-8007 Carousel header accessibility: treat slide images as decorative

For the Carousel Header, the image alt describes the visual, which does not really add information beyond what the text already conveys. So, from now on the screen readers will no longer announce them, and keeping focus on the text in the Carousel Header itself.

PLANET-8004 Carousel header accessibility: Add a consistent label of the pause/play button

The Carousel’s Play/Pause control had two changing labels (“Play button” and “Pause button”). This was read by screen readers and became confusing for users. Instead, a single “Autoplay” toggle button with a consistent accessible name has been put in place.

PLANET-7999 Search Results page accessibility: Fix focus trap inside the filter modal

On the search page, the “Apply filter“ behavior closed the modal visually, but focus remains inside the hidden modal. To fix this, The focus will return to the same trigger that opened the modal.

PLANET-7994 Search page accessibility: fix Apply filter focus so users land in results, not lost outside the modal

Behavior of the search page after the user opens the filters modal was unclear, as the focus did not returned to right section. Now, when the user activates “Apply filter”, the focus moves to the updated search results Heading.

PLANET-7993 Search page accessibility: announce Load more results and move focus to first new item

When the “Load more” got activated on the search results page, additional results appear but there was no announcement or clear focus behavior. Leaving screen reader users without the info that more items were loaded. To correct this, a status message like “More results loaded“ has been added, and the focus gets moved to the first newly loaded result.

PLANET-7990 Fix skip links on mobile so they move keyboard focus correctly when activated

Across the mobile site, most skip links received keyboard focus but did not move focus to their intended target when activated. Now, all skip links on mobile move keyboard focus to their respective targets when activated. These are: