Developing with Empathy. In this course you’ll get hands-on experience making web applications accessible. You’ll understand when and why users need accessibility. Then you’ll dive into the "how": making a page work properly with screen readers, and managing input focus (e.g. the highlight you see when tabbing through a form.)
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You’ll understand what "semantics" and "semantic markup" mean for web pages and add ARIA markup to enable navigating the interface with a range of assistive devices. Finally, you’ll learn styling techniques that help users with partial vision navigate your pages easily and reliably.
This course is also featured in our Full-Stack Web Developer Nanodegree program.
Not every user approaches their applications with the same abilities. Whether it’s age, vision concerns, limited hearing, a broken arm, or other limitations, everybody deserves access to their apps. This course dives into the why and how of making web applications accessible. As a bonus, accessible sites also tend to be more usable for everybody!
What You Will Learn
Lesson 1
Overview
- Learn why accessibility matters, and who it affects.
- Get a first look at the web accessibility guidelines (WAI – Web Accessibility Initiative).
- Understand “POUR” means for accessibility, and locate checklists to help make your own sites accessible.
Lesson 2
Focus
- Learn how to make a page usable for anyone navigating with the keyboard.
- An exploration of focusable elements.
- Learn how to manage focus in forms, in custom components, pop-ups, and off-screen content.
Lesson 3
Semantics Basics
- Make a page work for people who are unable to use a standard user interface.
- Use a screen reader to try out ordinary form elements and add markup to make them work even better.
- Understand the accessibility tree the browser constructs from the DOM.
Lesson 4
Semantics Extras
- Dive deeper into the screen-reader experience to add hyper-fast navigation.
- Learn how to arrange headings and label links so screen reader users can fly through your pages!
- Call out “landmarks” into your page to speed up navigation even more.
Lesson 5
Semantics - ARIA
- Move beyond the native elements of HTML into building custom controls and interactions.
- Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA).
- Learn how to add attributes to your custom interactions to make them as accessible as native elements.
Lesson 6
Style
- Learn the third pillar of Accessibility (after Focus and Semantics): Styling.
- Highlight the focus, indicate ARIA states, zoomed in or out, and support limited color or contrast vision.
- Audit your page with the Chrome Accessibility Tools and correct any styling issues that pop up.
Prerequisites and Requirements
Students should know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
