Don't Develop Just for Yourself - A Developer's Checklist to Accessibility

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Understanding Web Accessibility: A Developer's Perspective

Hello! I'm Evan Panola or Evis Panola, a senior software developer and web accessibility specialist at Futures Finland. In this blog, I will provide insights about web accessibility and how developers can make their websites inclusive for all users, regardless of their abilities.

The Diversity of Web Users

The diversity of web users is vast - not everyone can see, not everyone uses a mouse, not everyone has good fine motor skills, and many aren't that proficient with technology. We, developers, being power users, are often guilty of creating websites with ourselves in mind. However, our responsibility is to create websites that everyone can access effortlessly.

Who Is This Blog For?

This blog is for both experienced developers on their accessibility journey and those completely new to the concept of web accessibility. This blog provides concrete checks and suggestions to enhance your site’s accessibility. In addition, I will also share a link to a page with more checks and explanations.

The Need For Manual Checks

I am a strong advocate for manual checks in web accessibility. Automated accessibility testing tools, though helpful, can only provide binary results based on the code provided. They cannot grasp the complexity or context of an item, such as an image’s alternate text,
as humans can. Studies reveal that automated testing can only detect 15-40% of accessibility failures, thus the necessity for manual testing.

Common Issues and Solutions

There are several recurring accessibility issues I have encountered in my career. Here, I’d share two of such issues and their solutions:

  1. Disappearing Focus: This occurs when certain items disappear when attempting to navigate the site using only a keyboard. It leaves users lost, without any interactive features. This can be rectified by ensuring that all interactive items are included in the tab order and are not removed from the Document Object Model (DOM) when not in use.
  2. Focus Indicator Removal: Some developers remove the focus indicator because they consider it to be visually unattractive. But removing it makes sites inaccessible to many users. The focus indicator is crucial for navigating the screen, and I strongly suggest keeping it or replace it with a more visible one.

Page Language

An important aspect of accessible web design is setting the site’s main language using the lang attribute in the html tag. However, if the page contains other languages separate from the main language, setting the lang attribute in textual elements is also recommended. This assists screen readers in interpreting and reading the text in the correct language. A detailed example can be found in my post on developers' checklist.

In conclusion, web accessibility is an integral part of web development that ensures the inclusivity of all users, regardless of their abilities. As developers, we must carry on this task diligently.

Thank you for reading, and you can connect with me on Twitter at @EevISPANulA or visit my website at Eevis.codes for more insights.


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