Accessibility, Inputs & Vue
A presentation at Vue.js Berlin in in Berlin, Germany by Oscar
Accessibility, Inputs & Vue I was given more time than expected I think we need to talk about accessibility more broadly
Isn’t the Web Accessible?
« The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.» Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 1997 https://www.w3.org/Press/IPO-announce When the W3C launched the Web Accessibility Initiative
It is. In theory. Talk about HTML semantics before 2nd point webAIM tested homepages and the results were depressing
« 59,653,607 distinct accessibility errors were detected across the 1 million home pages—an average of 59.6 errors per page.» The WebAIM Million – Errors and Error Density, 2019 https://webaim.org/projects/million/ 97.8% of home pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures! Accessibility is a topic incredibly hard to test automatically Error free sites probably under 1 % How did this happen?
Neglect
These are very basic things Mostly easy to fix Alt text for large publications requires a team effort, especially if it is missing for a long time
!”!”!!#!!! Mostly white, male and able-bodied
It’s not us. It’s society. But also us. We are privileged We are responsible for what we do with it
Web Accessibility In Context https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/06/web-accessibility-context/ Be Birchall
We need to act. If we don’t want to look like a bunch of overpaid bollocks. Get people involved in web dev Listen to those who speak up
Complexity Over time websites have evolved from a medium to exchange scientific papers to one in which you can do basically anything These are the things that are – more often than not – not easy to fix
🚀
Accessibility is no rocket science. Some things are hard, yes. But let’s get the basics right.
Babelfish
WAI W3C Web Accessibility Initiative https://www.w3.org/WAI/ Group of authors in W3C working improving accessibility in websites
ARIA Accessible Rich Internet Applications https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/ A Specification «These semantics are designed to allow an author to properly convey user interface behaviors and structural information to assistive technologies in document-level markup.»
WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guidelines https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ Define Success Criteria Show Techniques
a11y Shorthand for accessibility Eleven letters between a and y Term itself is not undisputed in the accessibility community
Making the Web Accessible
« The only way this work gets done is if we start small, and if we work together.» Ethan Marcotte – The web we broke https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-web-we-broke/ He asked the question «What’s one thing I wish I understood better about accessibility?»
Collaboration On your own, understanding the ARIA and WCAG pages can be daunting
https://a11yproject.com/
https://a11y-style-guide.com/
https://inclusive-components.design/ Blog trying to be a Pattern Library
https://ui.reach.tech/
https://accessible-app.com/ Marcus Herrmann
https://dequeuniversity.com/ Online courses & resources
https://axesslab.com/ Digital consultancy & blog
https://a11yweekly.com/ Digital consultancy & blog
Amazingly helpful community Closed registration, but come talk to me afterwards if you want to be invited
Use semantic markup. And ARIA where applicable. The first rule of ARIA is «Do not use ARIA» e.g. buttons «ARIA, the language created to help make interfaces more accessible, was found on more than sixty percent of the home pages surveyed. Unfortunately, those home pages were more likely to have detectable accessibility errors.» Ethan Marcotte citing from AIM 1 million
Use Assistive Technology. Start small, by clicking around and listen to the SR output Start navigating around with your keyboard Close your eyes
Ask users. They are the experts. Nothing about us without us Be humble We are not able to say what works, e.g. steep wheelchair ramp
Put Accessibility in the Definition of Done … and be it your own. That means things you are going to do. It’s impossible to just make a whole existing site accessible. Try to get the people you are reporting aboard and agree
Accessible Inputs
« 59% of the 3.4 million form inputs identified were unlabeled (either via <label>, arialabel, or aria-labelledby).» The WebAIM Million – Form Labeling «The presence of unlabeled form controls was a strong indicator of broader errors—pages with at least one missing form label averaged nearly 30 more errors than those without any label errors.» Past interfaces I built are full of errors, present ones probably too
Structure taken from an online vue course
Labeling
Very little has changed
aria-label
Unless you write the crosswords for the New York Times: Don’t make your users guess
Accessible Icon Buttons https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-icon-buttons/
Marking required fields
« WAI-ARIA provides a collection of accessibility states and properties […].» https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#usage which are used to support platform accessibility APIs on various operating system platforms Markup static, ARIA allows developers to change things dynamically. Hence the rich
aria-hidden Hide an element from Assistive Technology
Hiding elements from screen readers using aria-hidden https://www.accessibility-developer-guide.com/examples/sensible-aria-usage/hidden/
Source: Scott O’Hara – Inclusively Hidden https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2017/04/14/inclusively-hidden.html
Required Attribute Requirements https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2019/02/required-attribute-requirements/
Describing fields
And with this problem we leave the realm of native HTML
aria-describedby Describe an element using the text content of another aria-describedby, provides the means to associate an element with the text of another object, or objects, in the document. When properly used, this attribute can provide the necessary information to assist in creating inclusive user experiences.»
Describing aria-describedby https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2018/09/describing-aria-describedby/ Scott O’Hara
Expanding the Toolbox
Validation & Vue
v-model compatibility Lets start on the component level
Basic Accessibility
https://www.npmjs.com/package/uuid IDs can very reliably be generated
Validation Validation has been a drag
aria-invalid Communicate the validity of a value
https://github.com/vuelidate/vuelidate
Punctuation is important especially with multiple strings
« The only way this work gets done is if we start small, and if we work together.» Ethan Marcotte – The web we broke https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-web-we-broke/
https://github.com/ovlb/vue-a11y-input The documentation is not finished.
Danke. Thank you. Merci. спасибо. Oscar Braunert code & design www.ovl.design o@ovl.design
At the end of February, WebAIM published The WebAIM Million, an accessibility analysis of the homepages of the one million most visited websites.
The findings are depressing. The average site contained about 60 errors. Things went even more downhill when putting JS frameworks in the equation. As a reaction to those findings, this talk tries to shed light on some accessibility best practices regarding accessible inputs, as well as do soulsearching why we, as developers, have failed so badly.
for free. You
can too.
Resources
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
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Tournant UI
Inclusive Vue component library in the making.
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The WebAIM Million
An accessibility analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages.
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World Wide Web Consortium Launches International Program Office for Web Accessibility Initiative
W3C press release on the launch of the Web Accessibility Initiative in 1997.
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How Privilege Defines Performance
Talk by Tatiana Mac on understanding and questioning privilege as well as an important call for inclusion and equality. Must watch. Seriously.
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Web Accessibility In Context
How do browsers and HTML support screen readers today? In this article, Be Birchall explains why it’s so important to prioritize accessibility among teams and why there needs to be more awareness raised among developers. Lack of awareness and prioritization, rather than any technical limitation, is currently the main barrier to an accessible web.
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Getting Started with Website Accessibility
Website accessibility is a buzzword these days, but not everyone has a firm grasp on what that term means. So what is website accessibility? Who is in need of accessible websites? And why should you as a website designer/developer/content creator even care?
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W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
Homepage of the WAI
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Accessible Rich Internet Applications
Index of the ARIA specification
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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Success Criteria and Techniques for accessible websites
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The web we broke
Ethan Marcotte’s well-written and important response to the WebAIM finding. Including the conclusion that «[t]he only way this work gets done is if we start small, and if we work together.»
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Fighting uphill
Another example published in response to WebAIM’s findings, calling for developers to keep advocating accessibility.
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The A11y Project
A collection of tips, tests and patterns to build accessible interfaces.
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Some Accessibility Resources
Scott O’Hara compiled a list of resources, which is well worth digging into. Loads of valuable stuff in there.
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A11Y Style Guide
A base styleguide/pattern library/baseline.
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Inclusive Components
A blog trying to be a pattern library. All about designing inclusive web interfaces, piece by piece.
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Inclusive Design Patterns
Written by Heydon Pickering, this book contains some valuable examples, especially if you are starting to build inclusive interfaces.
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Reach UI
Ryan Florence’s project, trying to build an accessible library to build React applications upon.
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Accessible App
Patterns & strategies for accessible web-apps. Maintained by Marcus Herrmann.
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Accessible routing with vue.js
Routing using Vue router isn’t accessible out-of-the-box. Marcus Herrmann shows how to improve on this.
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Deque University
Deque University offers training for every level of expertise and every area expertise in digital accessibility.
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axe for Web
An open source accessibility rules library for automated testing. Integrate accessibility into your existing testing environment.
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Axess Lab
Digital accessibility consultants and products
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A11y Weekly
A weekly newsletter on all things accessibility.
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a11y Slack
An amazingly helpful community about all things web accessibility.
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Getting Started with Web Accessibility in Vue
Good introduction on some basics for accessibility in Vue apps.
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Getting started with OS X VoiceOver
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Creating accessible input errors and help text
The article on which I based my implementation, written by James Jacobs on the Pulsar blog.
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Accessible Icon Buttons
The definitive guide on making icon buttons accessible, written by Sara Soueidan.
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Hiding elements from screen readers using aria-hidden
Intro to using aria-hidden.
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Inclusively Hidden
Extensive guide on different techniques to hide content.
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Required Attribute Requirements
If you want to use required with your input elements, make sure to take the findings of this article into consideration.
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Describing aria-describedby
Usage guide for aria-describedby.
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Using the aria-describedby property to provide a descriptive label for user interface controls
The purpose of this technique is to demonstrate how to use the WAI-ARIA aria-describedby property to provide programmatically determined, descriptive information about a user interface element.
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Vuelidate
Simple, lightweight, model-based validation for Vue.js.
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@tournant/input
NPM package of the discussed input implementation.
