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As a front-end dev, I'm trying to bake this into my process as much as possible. I am only around 20% of the way to that. Last year I focused on baking in testi
by gorpomon 8y ago
As a front-end dev, I'm trying to bake this into my process as much as possible. I am only around 20% of the way to that. Last year I focused on baking in testing into my process, now I'd like to do the same for accessibility. Big ups to Google for making Lighthouse an easy to use tool.
A business will likely never give explicit permission or budget for A11y work. Just like unit tests or e2e tests are rarely line items too. At my midsize consultancy we don't even mention it, we just bake it into the work we do. We find the time-- we make it work. It's our job. Writing inaccessible sites is kind of like building a car but ignore all environmental regulations. Your bosses boss might be ok with it, but should you be ok with it?
Think about all the work you do as a front-end dev that is not explicitly writing production code. You research libraries. You learn from screencasts. You read blog posts. You form complicated opinions about Redux. You have long code reviews. You agonize over naming. You can take similar care with accessibility. And lastly, it's not only important to be 100% accessible, it's also important to care and constantly improve. This a reminder to myself more than anyone else.
- losteric 8y agoHowever, your boss's boss may care about the legal risks of potentially violating ADA - the regulation is very unclear on how websites are covered.
- uhoh-itsmaciek 8y agoRight, it's unclear, but that's a reason to comply, not to ignore it. Regardless of your legal standing, you probably have better things to do than defending yourself in court: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hotels-ada-compliance-20181111-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hotels-ada-compliance...
- reaperducer 8y agoA business will likely never give explicit permission or budget for A11y work. A11y is the second highest priority in the web sites I build. But I'm in the healthcare industry.
- gorpomon 8y agoYep, definitely industry specific. I'm currently working in manufacturing, so on the other end completely.
- Vinnl 8y agoA tip: the most important step you can take is to do a short tutorial on how to navigate the web using a screen reader ([1] covers the basics - it's video though, and focused on OS X, but helped as a starting point for me to do the same on Ubuntu), then use that to navigate through your own app. You just need to do that once to already have a far better feeling of where common pain points are. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R-6WvAihms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R-6WvAihms
- gorpomon 8y agoVery true, and something I need to do again for my site.