People browse the web differently. Some will use a mouse, others prefer the keyboard and others need a screen reader or some other assistive device.
I personally use a combination of mouse and lots of keyboard in a normal day. I rarely reach for my mouse to fill in a form. I also rarely use my mouse to scroll up/down a page or click on things. And I get really annoyed when I don't know where I am on the page and what I'm about to click on. Usually, things are highlighted in some way so I know what I'm about to do.
These highlights are called focus indicators. They're the visual cues that tell me which element I'm interacting with when I tab through a website. WCAG requires all interactive content to have clearly visible focus indicators on all interactive elements.
This matters because without these indicators, when using a keyboard, I'm essentially navigating blind.
The problem is those highlights are deemed "ugly" or "off-brand" and developers just remove them.
outline: 0 !important
That's so easy to do!
And it happens more often than you think.
According to the data from the Web Almanac on focus styles, in 2025, 67% of websites deliberately removed these default focus outlines. That figure has gone up 14% from 2024. This can seriously harm accessibility unless developers replace them with proper alternatives. One of the alternatives is using the :focus-visible pseudo-class. The good news is that more developers are using this pseudo-class to create smarter focus indicators that only appear when actually needed (i.e. when using the keyboard and not when clicking with a mouse).
The 67% figure is genuinely worrying though. Two-thirds of websites are actively stripping out default browser focus indicators, often because designers find them "ugly." Unless they're replacing them with something better, and many aren't, they're creating barriers for users with disabilities.
So what can you do about it?
If you're building websites, test your keyboard navigation properly. Tab through your entire site. Can you see where you are at all times? If not, take the time to fix it. It isn't even hard to fix. Default focus indicators are literally free. Browsers give them to you. You have to actively write code to remove them.
So please, for the love of all that's holy, stop removing focus outlines unless you're replacing them with something better. Because the aesthetic excuses are rubbish. The fact that you can't handle a blue outline shouldn't come at the expense of someone's ability to use your site.