How can you align your web accessibility code review with the latest web development trends?

1 Use automated tools

Automated tools can help you check your web accessibility code for common issues and errors, such as missing alt text, contrast ratio, keyboard navigation, and semantic markup. They can also save you time and effort, as you can integrate them into your development workflow and run them regularly. However, automated tools are not enough to ensure web accessibility, as they cannot catch all the nuances and complexities of human interaction. You still need to complement them with manual testing and user feedback.

3 Adopt a responsive design

Responsive design is a web development trend that aims to make web applications adaptable and flexible to different screen sizes, devices, and orientations. It is also a key aspect of web accessibility, as it ensures that your web application can accommodate the diverse needs and preferences of your users, such as zooming, resizing, rotating, and switching modes. Responsive design can also improve your web performance, usability, and SEO. To implement a responsive design, you should use relative units, media queries, fluid grids, and flexible images in your web accessibility code review.

4 Leverage modern features

Modern web development features, such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and ARIA, can offer you more options and opportunities to enhance your web accessibility code review. For example, HTML5 provides semantic elements that can improve the structure and meaning of your web content, such as <header>, <nav>, <main>, <article>, and <footer>. CSS3 allows you to create animations, transitions, and effects that can add visual appeal and feedback to your web interactions, such as :focus, :hover, and :active. JavaScript enables you to add dynamic and interactive functionality to your web applications, such as sliders, tabs, accordions, and modals. ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a set of attributes that can help you make complex web components accessible to assistive technologies, such as screen readers, such as aria-label, aria-hidden, and aria-expanded.

5 Learn from best practices

One of the best ways to align your web accessibility code review with the latest web development trends is to learn from the best practices and examples of other web developers and organizations. You can find many online resources and platforms that showcase and share web accessibility solutions and techniques, such as WebAIM, A11y Project, A11y Style Guide, and WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices. You can also join web accessibility communities and networks, such as A11y Slack, A11y Twitter, and A11y Meetups, where you can exchange ideas, insights, and feedback with other web accessibility enthusiasts and experts.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?