Leveling Up Your Accessibility Skills: The ARIA Feat
Are you a web developer or do you create web content? Do you use JavaScript to make dynamic user interfaces? If you answered yes, then you should concern yourself with making those dynamic elements accessible and usable to as many as possible. One of the most powerful tools currently available for making webpages accessible is ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications specification. However, as Spider-Man has taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. The first rule of ARIA is that no ARIA is always superior to bad ARIA.
This workshop will teach you the basics for responsibly leveraging the full power of ARIA to make great accessible web pages. Through several hands-on exercises, participants will come to understand the purpose and power of ARIA and how to apply it to a variety of different dynamic web elements. Topics will include semantic HTML, ARIA landmarks and roles, expanding/collapsing content and modal dialog. Participants will also be taught some basic use of the screen reader NVDA for use in accessibility testing. Most importantly, the workshop will provide you with tools and materials so that you can keep on learning as HTML, JavaScript and ARIA continue to evolve and expand.
This is a hands-on workshop with web programming exercises. Attendees should have familiarity with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Attendees should also bring a laptop or tablet and be ready to download exercises from online or via a provided USB drive.
