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Getting started with accessibility

Chloe on June 13, 2020

I know I need to learn more about the subejct but I'm not sure where to get started. I've heard of ARIA and a11y project other than that I know very little.

Any tips/suggestions to learn more much appreciated.

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Ben Halpern

Accessibility is a pretty broad field, so there is a lot of ongoing learning and need to sort of get immersed.

...Following #a11y on DEV is a great start...

#a11y

And you can go into your dashboard and give it more weight to ensure you see more of it. (We'll make this feature more discoverable soon 😬)

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Chloe

Thanks am now following how do I give it more weight I don't see an option to do that currently or has that not been implemented yet?

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Sarah

I couldn't recommend Google Devs Youtube playlist on accessibility enough. They've worked hard on explaining each part as simply as possible

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNYkxOF...

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Eka

+1 this playlist!

Also, accessibility is not a field that stands on its own--it's integrated into all parts of your stack (HTML, CSS, JS; whatever framework/library you use). If you want somewhere practical to start, you can run your projects/websites through Lighthouse or web.dev audit and see your accessibility score. It will give you recommendations on things you can improve.

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Chloe

I've used Lighthouse a bit and I have the axe plugin which has helped a bit but it's something I know I need a better understanding of. Multiple links to that playlist it looks great I will have a watch thanks.

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Suzanne Aitchison

I've heard this course by edX is pretty good at covering fundamentals including the broader context of accessibility and user experience. It's free if you don't want the certificate at the end.

EdX Introduction to web accessibility

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Suzanne Aitchison • Edited

Also as a shameless plug for myself, I have quite a few posts on here and at my site Up Your A11y that you might find useful 😊

I also have a talk I made a YouTube version of that focuses on how to build some good habits as a dev just getting started with accessibility:

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Some kind of a11y lint might be a good start, especially if you use NPM and ESLint.

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Chloe

I do use ESlint to a certain extent yes is the a11y lint a separate plugin? (I use VSCode)

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt
  • JSX
  • Vue
  • I recalled that there also ones for HTML-only as well, but I can only find this, enabler CLI.
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Gaurav Saini

These videos ware a great starting point for me
youtu.be/0hqhAIjE_8I
And
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNYkxOF...