> what does toggle "left" and "right" really mean?
Nothing, because that's not the point of the article.
It's weird to me that this is such a big point here.
In an actual UI, you will have labels or indicators telling you what the toggle means and what the options are - "Safety door unlatched" vs "Control motors engaged". That's a toggle between two choices and having it a toggle like that would be safer than checkboxes.
Otherwise your checkbox without labels is equally bad UX because what does "on" and "off" mean for an unlabeled checkbox? I could give enough examples from work how vaguely labeled checkboxes like "remote authentication" are terrible UX.
For toggling between mutually exclusive choices please use radio buttons. Checkboxes, and less obvious variants, are for enabling/disabling clearly labeled options that are not mutually exclusive.
That used to be Interaction Design 101 back in the olden days, ie. 1990s.
Nothing, because that's not the point of the article.
It's weird to me that this is such a big point here.
In an actual UI, you will have labels or indicators telling you what the toggle means and what the options are - "Safety door unlatched" vs "Control motors engaged". That's a toggle between two choices and having it a toggle like that would be safer than checkboxes.
Otherwise your checkbox without labels is equally bad UX because what does "on" and "off" mean for an unlabeled checkbox? I could give enough examples from work how vaguely labeled checkboxes like "remote authentication" are terrible UX.