CHAPTER 5
Making Accessible Interfaces
Many of the new elements in HTML5 help us more accurately describe our
content. This becomes more important when other programs start interpreting
our code. For most of us, the program that reads the web page is our graphical
web browser, but we can’t forget about people who have to interact with our
content and applications through other means. We need to make our web
content accessible to as many people as possible.Some people use software called screen readers to translate the graphical
contents of the screen to audio that’s read aloud. Screen readers work with
the operating system or the web browser to identify content, links, images,
and other elements on the screen. Whereas sighted users can easily scan the
page for content, people using screen readers have the text read to them in
a linear, top-down fashion.Screen readers have made amazing advances, but they are always lagging
behind the current trends. Live regions on pages, where polling or Ajax
requests alter content on the page, are difficult to detect. More complex pages
can be difficult to navigate because of the screen reader needing to read a lot
of the content aloud. And because the elements on the page are read in a
linear fashion, items like headers, navigation areas, and all of those widgets
at the top of pages are reread on each page refresh.Web Accessibility Initiative—Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)
is a specification that provides ways to improve the accessibility of websites,
especially web applications, and reduce the pain points users of assistive
technology often encounter.^1 It is especially useful if you’re developing appli-
cations with JavaScript controls and Ajax. Some parts of the WAI-ARIADownload from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> report erratum • discuss