Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
When I said it was easy what I meant was once you understand each element and attribute and why it is relevant you can put stuff together in a few key strokes.
I admit I think I did underplay the "knowledge" part - but that is I suppose my point. When starting out you don't need more than the basic knowledge of those 5 points, what you really need is a resource that goes "trying to make a custom select, here are 3 skeletons you can copy paste and here is what you can and can't do with them". I mean, I know it would still result in some mistakes but I think it solves the "overwhelm" that puts so many developers off.
Some of the comments here have made me realise that perhaps we are heading in the wrong direction because there are now more and more frameworks. I could give you a React example of how to do something but if you are new you aren't going to understand how to implement that in Vue or Angular.
The final nugget of wisdom you said there was "keep it simple" - the amount of times people start using ARIA to add role="navigation" to a <div> instead of just <nav>...is it any wonder people "switch off" to accessibility! Not sure if over use of WAI-ARIA is HTML 4 legacy or just that there is so much erroneous information out there!
There is that much erroneous information in the WCAG/WAI documentation. I found a thread on github where they have been arguing about whether a navigation menu is a real menu since 2017!
They all pretty much agree that navigation is not a menu - BUT THEN SHOW ME THE CODE that JAWS will read AND works with the keyboard AND creates an intuitive menu for sighted users on different devices.
Are any of these people developers with actual work to do and actual projects with actual deadlines?
I mean I want to make my (internal) site inclusive - but make it easy so I can actually do it.
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
Don't get me started on the kb of dependencies for simple projects thing, I will have to get my soap box out and start preaching if we go down that route 🤣🤣🤣
Learning the fundamentals is indeed essential. But if everyone did that we wouldn't have thousands of frameworks to choose from!
But hey, what do I know, I am one of the tailwind "haters" so maybe I am just old and out-dated!
Yet again the big issue summed up in one nice sentence:
" We need better education and information, for sure, but as a developer, you have to teach yourself, and that is not so simple."
It is so difficult to teach yourself about accessibility due to the amount of rubbish information.
I mean there was a post a couple of weeks ago singing the virtues of "Fully accessible Menu components"....I found 5 issues in 2 minutes so how can anyone know who to believe?
Preword: this comment is not a reflection on your article, it is really well written and thought out, this is just a warning on believing things are accessible when they may not be!
"Fully Accessible"....the accessibility of this is questionable at best.
Why aren't they using an <ul> and <li> for the list of buttons so that screen readers that don't support role="menu" still get a count of options?
Why are they using role="none" on a div, when it has no role in the first place.
Why do they stop you tabbing out of the menu when it is open, that is not expected behaviour?
You should be able to cycle through all items that start with a letter (so if you press d it should go to "duplicate", pressing d again should go to "delete"), which it does not do, it stops at the first item (which can be very confusing).
Similarly if you are on the first menu item pressing up arrow should go to the last menu item. If the focus is on the last menu item pressing down arrow should move to the first menu item.
Anyway - there are probably other issues, by the time I found all of the above I had seen enough!
Oh and WAI-ARIA is your last resort, support is not as great as you may think, even for basic WAI-ARIA attributes, which is why semantics such as <ul> are so important!
Then the "good" information is unreadable and difficult to understand and....we are back to my rant! 🤣🤣
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
Sorry I always forget the comment doesn't link to the article (which is really strange!)
No they didn't respond, but it wasn't there fault as someone pointed out, they were just reciting what the devs who built it said. But that is what I mean, people build echo chambers very easily that spread incorrect information and it just escalates.
Oh I agree, I don't want to put people off posting, the more people talking about accessibility the better!
The problem is I often get comments deleted when I try to help (perhaps it is just my writing style is quite "direct" so comes off as attacking and harsh 😋).
Plus there are loads of sites where I can't comment so how can I and others "warn" people that the information is incorrect.
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
As for the comments I am actually thinking I might suggest a tag "#comeAtMeBro" which lets people know you are open to criticism in the comments 🤣 (I am kind of serious but a different tag obviously...you might see a side post on that later now I think about it!!!)
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I agree with every single word of this. 💪
When I said it was easy what I meant was once you understand each element and attribute and why it is relevant you can put stuff together in a few key strokes.
I admit I think I did underplay the "knowledge" part - but that is I suppose my point. When starting out you don't need more than the basic knowledge of those 5 points, what you really need is a resource that goes "trying to make a custom select, here are 3 skeletons you can copy paste and here is what you can and can't do with them". I mean, I know it would still result in some mistakes but I think it solves the "overwhelm" that puts so many developers off.
Some of the comments here have made me realise that perhaps we are heading in the wrong direction because there are now more and more frameworks. I could give you a React example of how to do something but if you are new you aren't going to understand how to implement that in Vue or Angular.
The final nugget of wisdom you said there was "keep it simple" - the amount of times people start using ARIA to add
role="navigation"to a<div>instead of just<nav>...is it any wonder people "switch off" to accessibility! Not sure if over use of WAI-ARIA is HTML 4 legacy or just that there is so much erroneous information out there!There is that much erroneous information in the WCAG/WAI documentation. I found a thread on github where they have been arguing about whether a navigation menu is a real menu since 2017!
They all pretty much agree that navigation is not a menu - BUT THEN SHOW ME THE CODE that JAWS will read AND works with the keyboard AND creates an intuitive menu for sighted users on different devices.
Are any of these people developers with actual work to do and actual projects with actual deadlines?
I mean I want to make my (internal) site inclusive - but make it easy so I can actually do it.
Don't get me started on the kb of dependencies for simple projects thing, I will have to get my soap box out and start preaching if we go down that route 🤣🤣🤣
Learning the fundamentals is indeed essential. But if everyone did that we wouldn't have thousands of frameworks to choose from!
But hey, what do I know, I am one of the tailwind "haters" so maybe I am just old and out-dated!
Yet again the big issue summed up in one nice sentence:
It is so difficult to teach yourself about accessibility due to the amount of rubbish information.
I mean there was a post a couple of weeks ago singing the virtues of "Fully accessible Menu components"....I found 5 issues in 2 minutes so how can anyone know who to believe?
Preword: this comment is not a reflection on your article, it is really well written and thought out, this is just a warning on believing things are accessible when they may not be!
"Fully Accessible"....the accessibility of this is questionable at best.
Why aren't they using an
<ul>and<li>for the list of buttons so that screen readers that don't supportrole="menu"still get a count of options?Why are they using
role="none"on a div, when it has no role in the first place.Why do they stop you tabbing out of the menu when it is open, that is not expected behaviour?
You should be able to cycle through all items that start with a letter (so if you press
dit should go to "duplicate", pressingdagain should go to "delete"), which it does not do, it stops at the first item (which can be very confusing).Similarly if you are on the first menu item pressing up arrow should go to the last menu item. If the focus is on the last menu item pressing down arrow should move to the first menu item.
Anyway - there are probably other issues, by the time I found all of the above I had seen enough!
Oh and WAI-ARIA is your last resort, support is not as great as you may think, even for basic WAI-ARIA attributes, which is why semantics such as
<ul>are so important!Then the "good" information is unreadable and difficult to understand and....we are back to my rant! 🤣🤣
Sorry I always forget the comment doesn't link to the article (which is really strange!)
No they didn't respond, but it wasn't there fault as someone pointed out, they were just reciting what the devs who built it said. But that is what I mean, people build echo chambers very easily that spread incorrect information and it just escalates.
Oh I agree, I don't want to put people off posting, the more people talking about accessibility the better!
The problem is I often get comments deleted when I try to help (perhaps it is just my writing style is quite "direct" so comes off as attacking and harsh 😋).
Plus there are loads of sites where I can't comment so how can I and others "warn" people that the information is incorrect.
True contact form could be the way to go!
As for the comments I am actually thinking I might suggest a tag "#comeAtMeBro" which lets people know you are open to criticism in the comments 🤣 (I am kind of serious but a different tag obviously...you might see a side post on that later now I think about it!!!)