Book Description
We make inaccessible and unusable websites and apps all the time, but it’s not for lack of skill or talent. It’s just a case of doing things the wrong way. We try to build the best experiences we can, but we only make them for ourselves and for people like us.
This book looks at common interface patterns from the perspective of an inclusive designer — someone trained in building experiences that cater to the huge diversity of abilities, preferences and circumstances out there.
There’s no such thing as an ‘average’ user, but there is such a thing as an average developer. This book will take you from average to expert in the area that matters the most: making things more readable and more usable to more people.
Ensuing chapters will look into discrete interface patterns; modules, components, widgets, conventions, whatever-you-want-to-call-thems. It would be foolhardy not to first acknowledge that each will ultimately belong to a web document. HTML pages vary dramatically in shape and size and can include any combination of patterns, but there are a handful of ‘document level’ best practices to which we should adhere.
The aim here is not to go in search of the ultimate 'boilerplate' but to configure a parent web page to support inclusive design.
You'll learn:
- Accessibility myths and misconceptions as well as common solutions and rules of thumbs,
- A library of well-tested accessible HTML/CSS components that you can use right away,
- How to properly use WAI-ARIA roles and Content Accessibility Guidelines,
- How to tackle common accessibility issues in RWD,
- How to deal with "skip" links and external links, as well as navigation regions and landmarks,
- How to keep labels, buttons, tables of contents, dynamic widgets and tabbed interfaces accessible,
- How to implement infinite scrolling, grid display and dynamic content accessibly,
- How to deal with password validation, error messages, web forms, JavaScript patterns and touch targets,
- How to keep an interface accessible in legacy browsers,
- How to prototype with accessibility in mind.