A11y Thoughts
I’ve recently taken a keen interest in accessibility, and here I’ll keep some notes for myself and others. Please let me know if you have any good resources or thoughts.
First impressionsLink to the First impressions section of this page
I’ve noticed that WCAG is very dense, and I can somewhat forgive this as it is an international standard. Despite assuming it would need to be exhaustive and somewhat beaucratic, I’m still surprised.
ToolsLink to the Tools section of this page
Tools are important.
Lighthouse was my introduction to accessibility.
I spent some time looking for other options, and found deque-labs/axe-core powers Lighthouse’s accessibility tests.
What I really wanted was a full audit, instead of one that left me with “manually check x, y and z”.
Wave webaim is pretty cool as well, but they add rules outside of WCAG which is fine but it can make it confusing if you’re just looking to adhere to WCAG.
guidepup This tool looks very cool, although I haven’t had a chance to look into it much yet.
I have a feeling something very thorough could be created with playwright, although it would be a fair bit of work. One could go through and test the things that lighthouse suggests to test manually.
I’m still on the hunt as of now…
SolutionsLink to the Solutions section of this page
I’ve noticed that one a relatively common solution is accessibe’s widget. This uses ai to create image alt text (usually not a good choice, most images shouldn’t have an alt) and will basically override the design of the website to meet user’s requirements.
I don’t love this option, because I feel it makes the fancy design for people who don’t need assistance. What I’d want is for well designed creative websites to be made accessible by default.
I do like that it gives option for sites that cannot afford to redesign with WCAG in mind to meet minimum requirements ASAP.
I guess the best solution I know of is to pay for a manual audit, or as a developer to learn what it takes to become an auditor for your own sites