How can you make your front-end development portfolio more accessible and responsive?

1 Use semantic HTML

Semantic HTML is the foundation of a well-structured and accessible web page. It helps you organize your content logically, improve your SEO, and make your page easier to read by screen readers and other assistive technologies. Semantic HTML elements have clear meanings and roles, such as <header>, <nav>, <main>, <article>, <section>, <footer>, and so on. Use them appropriately to mark up your portfolio sections and components, and avoid using generic <div> and <span> elements for everything.

2 Follow WCAG guidelines

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, a set of standards and recommendations to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. WCAG covers four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each principle has several guidelines and success criteria that you can follow to check and improve the accessibility of your portfolio. For example, some of the guidelines include providing alternative text for images, ensuring sufficient color contrast, using descriptive labels for forms and buttons, and avoiding automatic media playback.

4 Optimize images and fonts

Images and fonts can greatly enhance the visual appeal and personality of your portfolio, however, they can also slow down the loading time and affect the user experience. To optimize your images and fonts, you should choose the right format and size for your images. Vector images such as SVG are best suited for icons and logos, while raster images like JPG, PNG, or WEBP are better for photos and illustrations. Compressing your images can reduce the file size without sacrificing quality. Additionally, you should use responsive images with the <picture> element or srcset and sizes attributes to serve different versions of your images based on the screen size. For fonts, choose one that matches your style and theme but avoid using too many fonts or font weights that can slow down loading time. Utilizing a font service like Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts can help to load fonts faster and more reliably. Finally, use the font-display property to control how your fonts are rendered while they are loading.

5 Test and debug your portfolio

The final step to make your front-end development portfolio more accessible and responsive is to test and debug it on various browsers, devices, and platforms. You can use tools like Chrome DevTools, Firefox Developer Tools, or Safari Web Inspector to inspect and modify your code, simulate different screen sizes and orientations, and check for errors and warnings. You can also use tools like Lighthouse, WebAIM, or axe to audit and improve the performance, accessibility, and SEO of your portfolio. Additionally, you can ask for feedback from other developers, users, or potential employers to identify and fix any issues or areas of improvement.