Unlocking Accessibility: A Guide to Building Inclusive Web Applications
Why Accessibility Matters
When building a web application, accessibility is often overlooked, despite its importance. However, it’s crucial to ensure that users with disabilities can enjoy the full range of your app’s features. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18.7% of U.S. citizens have some kind of disability, which could represent a significant portion of your users. Moreover, failing to make your web app accessible could lead to legal ramifications.
Debugging Your Website for Accessibility
To ensure your website is accessible, follow these steps:
- Keyboard Navigation: Check if you can navigate your website using only a keyboard. If not, it’s not accessible.
- Web Extensions: Use tools like axe to automate parts of the accessibility auditing process.
- Implement Skip Links: Help users navigate your site quickly by providing skip links.
- Reduce Motion: Ensure animations don’t negatively impact the user experience.
Keyboard Navigation in Action
Let’s test a simple website for accessibility. Using the tab key, we can navigate to necessary buttons. However, when opening a modal, we encounter a bug – it won’t close. To troubleshoot, we examine the code and identify the problem. By changing the div to a button and adding an outline when active, we fix the issue.
Web Extensions: Axe to the Rescue
Axe is a powerful tool that helps web developers make their websites more accessible. It identifies accessibility issues and provides recommendations for improvement. Let’s run axe on a website and explore the results.
Skip Links: The Unsung Heroes of Accessibility
Skip links enable users to skip to the content of a particular page, saving them from navigating through menu items. To create a skip link, we add an id to the page we want to navigate to and create a link with a corresponding id. Then, we add CSS to make the link visible only when the user begins to tab.
Reduced Motion: Giving Users Control
Reduced motion is often overlooked, but it’s crucial for accessibility. By giving users control over animations, we can ensure they don’t negatively impact the user experience. We can use prefers-reduced-motion to make animations accessible.
Conclusion
Accessibility is a complex and multifaceted topic. While we’ve covered some essential areas, there’s more to explore. By prioritizing accessibility, we can create inclusive web applications that cater to all users.