Web accessibility is the practice of designing and developing web content so that it can be accessed and used by people with disabilities. This includes people with visual impairments, hearing impairments, mobility impairments, cognitive impairments, and other disabilities. Source: Frontend Engineering Blog ↗
Accessibility is critical aspect of frontends that are likely to be used by lot of people. Do not assume that only people with certain disabilities need accessibility features. Ordinary users too use these features from time to time and making frontends accessible makes life easier for all your users. For example large fonts was an accessibility feature in Android, but became extremely popular a lot of users preferred to use larger fonts. Similarly, dark mode was initially meant for visually impaired users but these days is actually used by all.
Design with accessibility in mind from day 1
Do not treat accessibility as an afterthought. Always treat it as a first class citizen of your product development. This about it right from day 1 and make sure your UX and Engineers are well aware of this.
Get your engineers trained on these tools as well.
Build tooling to help your engineers build accessible front ends.
It is important that you help your engineers build accessible frontends with least intrusion in their day to day work. For example they should always build components in accessible friendly manners and in order to do this you should create tooling that can verify this as your product is built.
Instead of manual testing rely on static code analysis to ensure that the accessibility is factored in.
Do third party auditing on periodic basis
Whenever you launch a new feature get it audited before you make it fully public. Use third party tools that can crawl your webpage and report your accessibility issues. Or use manual testing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, accessibility is not an afterthought but a critical aspect of frontend development. Designing with accessibility in mind from day one and providing training and tooling for engineers are essential. Static code analysis can help ensure accessibility, and third-party auditing can catch any issues. Prioritizing accessibility benefits all users, not just those with disabilities.
Read more about Accessible Frontends ↗ here.
