Ensuring your frontend code is accessible requires consistent development effort and testing of inclusive markup and scripted interactions. In this workshop we’ll build an accessible web application using widely supported and proven tools and techniques. We’ll start with plumbing accessibility information with semantic HTML and ARIA before moving on to the tricky parts of building and testing JavaScript-heavy components in later workshops.
- The workshop is intended for intermediate to advanced web developers. Beginners are also welcome to follow along. Knowledge of the Web Platform will be necessary (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript).
- In later workshops, the development exercises will become increasingly more advanced. Experience with JavaScript, React, and Git will be necessary.
- Browser-based setup with GitPod
- GitPod provides a cloud-based development environment similar to VS Code
- Requires a login with Github
- Note: GitPod may have accessibility issues
- Download a zip file for local setup
- Clone this Git repo for local setup (see instructions below)
All of these must be available in your PATH. To verify things are set up
properly, you can run this:
git --version
node --version
yarn --versionIf you have trouble with any of these, learn more about the PATH environment variable and how to fix it here for windows or mac/linux.
If you want to commit and push your work as you go, you’ll want to fork first and then clone your fork rather than this repo directly. Be sure to fetch the latest code on the day of the workshop by syncing your fork.
After you’ve made sure to have the pre-requisites installed, you should be able to run a few commands to get set up:
git clone https://github.com/testing-accessibility/workshop-semantics-html-aria.git
cd workshop-semantics-html-aria
yarn
There may be periodic changes to this repo. To update your local build, run:
git pull
Note: if you have local changes, you'll need to commit them to a branch. Here's some extra help on using Git: [https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/git-pull-explained/]
If you get any errors when building the site, please read through them and see if you can find out what the problem is. If you can’t work it out on your own then please file an issue and provide all the output from the commands you ran (even if it’s a lot).
This repo contains various workshop files and a React web application. To get the app up and running (and really see if it worked) with Parcel, run this command from the project’s root folder:
yarn startThis should start the site for your browser at the address indicated in your Terminal:
http://localhost:1234
You can also view a deployed version: https://workshop-semantics-html-aria.testingaccessibility.com/
In this workshop, we'll dig into specifics of an important aspect of accessibility: semantics and ARIA in HTML markup. The accessibility information plumbed through your pages and applications with semantic code is essential for users of assistive technology. It assists other use cases as well, such as voice navigation and SEO.
Here, we will primarily work on site listings and associated components. The local URL is:
http://localhost:1234
- exercise1-headings-landmarks
- exercise2-what-is-aria
- exercise3-accessible-names
- exercise4-programmatic-a11y-info
- exercise5-what-is-aom
This structure will allow you to iterate on working files with separate directories for the example sections.
The purpose of an exercise is not for you to work through all the material. It’s intended to get your brain thinking about the right questions to ask as we go through the material together.
Contributions of any kind are welcome!
Links from this and all of the Testing Accessibility workshops have been compiled on a resources page: https://workshop-resources.testingaccessibility.com/#workshop-semantic-html-aria