We need to talk about A11y
Did you know when you make a website using the relevant semantic markup, you get a lot of helping hands for accessibility from browsers? Do you know about what types of Assistive Technologies (AT) are out there? Do you think you'll never need to use one yourself?
Admittedly, my route into development as a career has been a strange one, focused on just 'getting things done'. This means that, sometimes, you learn a trip or trick - Perhaps to take a div element and write necessary code to that into a button, because you can do things with it you couldn't with a normal button element... But should you do this?
a11y - What is it?
If you've never seen the above numeronym, which Wikipedia describes as a word or abbreviation composed partially or wholly of numerals, it stands for Accessibility (A[ccessibilit]y). A11y is a really important, but often overlooked aspect to the web experience for many people. Public services need to adhere to strict accessibility standards, set by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Click here to learn more about WCAG.
Why should we care?
Apart from it being the right thing to do, accessibility is actually a legal requirement for businesses. If you've got your own website, even if it's a personal website, I would suggest it's in your best interests to make sure you're WCAG compliant. By having a space on the web, you're providing some form of content to someone - and they may have accessibility issues. You, too, may one day have accessibility issues. As the saying goes, you never know.
I was floored by an interview I was listening to recently. It was a developer who also streams as part of her work, Salma Alam-Naylor who goes by the pseudonym whitep4nth3r (Link to whitep4nth3r's twitch channel). The video discusses what happens if you suddenly couldn't type any longer, of which she has experience with due to her issues with carpal tunnel syndrome (Wikipedia link to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). It resonated with me for a couple reasons:
- It can happen to anyone at any time
- I'm actually half-blind - If I lose sight in my one functional eye, I'd be blind and would also need to rely on Assistive Technologies.
During the interview, Salma mentions that she was on stream trying to learn how to use some ATs to code - and the amount of work she needed to put into learning the AT, to do her job which she's done for so long, caused her to cry on the stream. They then proceeded to show a clip from that stream, which was truly a heart-wrenching realisation that this can happen to anyone, at any time.
How can I learn more about a11y?
I started by taking a small YouTube course in accessibility - This was a great introduction to the topic from a more broad level than just saying "things need to be accessible". It explains the in's and out's of why we need alt text, what aria attributes are and even how to check colour contrast. All of these thoughts are quite small, simple steps to getting started on the path to working on accessibility issues. This has even helped in the day job, where I was able to quickly identify an accessibility issue just from going through and doing the practical sessions on the below video.
Whilst that video doesn't encompass everything with a11y, it's a really good starting point. It shows you the usefulness of ARIA, although my favourite quote was "The first rule of ARIA, don't use ARIA". In context, this is because if you can use semantic HTML tags, that's better suited for accessibility than it is to make a new custom element, whilst squeezing in ARIA attributes to make it work in an accessible way.
The subject might be a bit dry at times, but remember, this is something that could affect you at any point in your life. You may need to interact with websites using assistive technology in the future. You just don't know what the future may hold for you. So, if you're only thinking about your own services and projects and nothing else, still consider taking accessibility seriously. For a lot of people, they have no choice and they need the utilise these technologies to browse your content.
- https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome
- https://whitep4nth3r.com/
Thanks for reading about accessibility today. I'm looking to write more on the subject in the not-too-distant future, now that I've got access to publishing to my blog again (More on that another day). Much love and happy tinkering fellow geeks - Timlah