component will be accessible wherever
we use it in our application.”TRAILBLAZING TOOLS
That’s all well and good. However, we
must also consider all of the increasingly
innovative technologies and platforms
that promise to fundamentally redefine
UI conventions. If the practice of
‘inclusive design’ espouses the value
of embracing the widest possible range
of people from the outset, what exactly
will happen when we start to shift
our focus on to using more bleeding
edge languages? “While the practice is
becoming more popular in product design
circles, it isn’t as prevalent when it comes
to emerging technologies,” warns Bailey.
“An example of this is Google’s Portals
element initiative, a highly publicised
proposal for enabling seamless, app-
like navigation. Its technical demo
shipped with zero support for keyboard
interaction or semantic description in the
accessibility API.”
Similarly, the broad adoption of
technologies like GSAP and WebGL often
threatens to crack open the age-old
fissure between accessibility and art.
However, developers’ desire to satiate
the public’s appetite for bold creative
statements does seem to be coupled
with an increasing pragmatism when
it comes increased usability. “Even
though there is an unfortunate clash
between experimental experiences
and accessibility, I see more and more
people trying to close the gap and
implement solid solutions to make their
art accessible to anyone,” says Garnier.
“For example, by combining HTML and
WebGL, it is now possible to navigate
using the keyboard in a 3D application.
A part of the process is also to educate
clients on what’s now unavoidable for the
best experience.”
‘Best experience’ is, of course,
something of a moving target – but are
we making enough strides to balance
innovative experiences with universalReact Native make it possible to build
mobile web apps that are respectful of
accessibility standards.”
However, Hamilton argues that the
accessibility of a digital product is
only ever as good as the accessibility
of the framework upon which it was
built. “Front-end frameworks have
traditionally been an accessibility
barrier and enforced exclusionary
design choices, such as the removal
of focus rectangles,” he says.
“However,frameworks don’t need to
be a blocker: by taking care of some of
the heavy lifting, they can become an
accessibility enabler instead.”
A good example of this would be
the introduction of components, with
reuse having positive implications for
consistency in the way accessibility is
applied. “This means developing atomic
pieces of code that can be reused all
across the application,” says Bolonio.
“So when we develop a component – for
example a button or a link – and we make
it accessible, we can be sure that thisScott O’Hara, senior accessibility
engineer at The Paciello Group, draws a
simple example here: “ is for
links and
FRONT-END FRAMEWORKS
But, of course, in the post-HTML5 era
developers lean heavily on JavaScript and
we also have a plethora of frameworks
to choose from. So does the adoption of
technology like React, Vue.js and Angular
offer us new a11y allies? “The rise of
front-end frameworks was definitely
a positive step forwards,” says Garnier.
“With the explosion of React or Vue, our
code editors also became more clever.
Linters will complain if you forget
important attributes in your tags. Some
libraries are even built around the use
of the ARIA attributes while tools like
The new frontier of accessibility
Below Microsoft’s
CaptionBot.ai is an online example
of how AI-powered analysis of
images can interpret content and
create detailed descriptions