We’re coming to the end of this course on accessibility. 😎 In this chapter, we will cover a few final tips and resources.
Discover New Tools Dedicated to Accessibility
As a developer, you'll always be on the lookout for tools to make your work easier. In this section, we'll highlight a few important ones used for accessibility: validators, checklists, and libraries.
Evaluate Accessibility With Validators and Checklists
When you work on a static site without a database, user account management or extensive interactions, you do not necessarily need to have a complex working architecture.
Although less and less common, you may sometimes create complete websites or even portfolios using just HTML/CSS, i.e., without using a CMS. In these cases, the validator "AChecker" is a good tool.
Use Checklists Wisely
If you followed the Make Your Web Content Accessible course, you'll know that using a checklist isn't a perfect approach, but as long as you’re aware of their shortcomings they can be useful tools, particularly if you’re new to accessibility. A publicly available checklist that you might find helpful is the checklist provided by the A11YProject.
Turn to Libraries
When your project grows or becomes more complex, libraries can assist you by checking and highlighting the sections of code that you’ll need to fix.
The Pa11y organization provides many tools that you can use both on your machine and within a continuous integration context.
Advanced Approaches for Accessibility
If you're interested in expanding your accessible programming skills, here are a couple of design approaches to look into:
Graceful degradation: creating the best experience possible for the most recent browsers, while ensuring that the user can fully experience the site using older technologies.
Progressive enhancement: focusing on content first, and using semantics as the foundation for web development.
These go hand in hand to make a site usable by the greatest number of users.
Main Course Takeaways
As you've seen, integrating accessibility into the development of a web project is entirely possible! You can now put these skills into practice, whether in the context of an OpenClassrooms projects or a professional project.
The more accessibility is implemented upstream, the better it will be integrated. When you have to fix accessibility problems retroactively on an existing project, it will require more time and effort than designing for accessibility from the beginning.
Let’s Recap!
Remember to validate your site with validators and tools integrated into the infrastructure of your project.
You can also make a checklist with your project manager/designer to provide a framework for the accessibility of your site.
The practices of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement can assist with accessibility.
And that’s a wrap! Hopefully, you now feel more confident in integrating accessible development practices into your work. Take a stab at the final quiz to test your knowledge. 😎
