Inclusive Development: Using Style Guides to Improve Website Accessibility
Carie Fisher
We wear a lot of hats as front-end developers. Depending on the client or company you work for, you may be the designer, UX/UI specialist, site-builder, QA tester, and developer all rolled into one. How can we possibly add the accessibility hat on top of all that? What accessible pieces should we even include? Which pieces are easy wins vs. impossible juggernauts? How do we implement inclusive development when a project does not have a lot of time or budget to include that piece? One way we can tackle these issues is by using an accessible component driven approach. By thinking about inclusiveness from the start, we can get a head start on accessibility while still building the required site components.
In the spring of 2017, I developed an open-source KSS node style guide demonstrating good accessibility practices. The style guide comes with pre-populated accessible components that include helpful links to related tools and articles to make your site more inclusive. These components also serve as a guide for both HTML markup and SCSS/CSS code, to inform designers, front-end and back-end developers at every stage of the website’s creation.
Session Outline
What exactly is the role of a Front-end developer?
What, Who, and Why of Website Accessibility
What is Inclusive Development?
Why use Component Driven Development for Accessibility?
Demonstration of KSS node-based accessible style guide - http://a11y-style-guide.com/style-guide
https://2017.badcamp.net/session/design-theme-ux/intermediate/inclusive-development-using-style-guides-improve-website
We wear a lot of hats as front-end developers. Depending on the client or company you work for, you may be the designer, UX/UI specialist, site-builder, QA tester, and developer all rolled into one. How can we possibly add the accessibility hat on top of all that? What accessible pieces should we even include? Which pieces are easy wins vs. impossible juggernauts? How do we implement inclusive development when a project does not have a lot of time or budget to include that piece? One way we can tackle these issues is by using an accessible component driven approach. By thinking about inclusiveness from the start, we can get a head start on accessibility while still building the required site components.
In the spring of 2017, I developed an open-source KSS node style guide demonstrating good accessibility practices. The style guide comes with pre-populated accessible components that include helpful links to related tools and articles to make your site more inclusive. These components also serve as a guide for both HTML markup and SCSS/CSS code, to inform designers, front-end and back-end developers at every stage of the website’s creation.
Session Outline
What exactly is the role of a Front-end developer?
What, Who, and Why of Website Accessibility
What is Inclusive Development?
Why use Component Driven Development for Accessibility?
Demonstration of KSS node-based accessible style guide - http://a11y-style-guide.com/style-guide
https://2017.badcamp.net/session/design-theme-ux/intermediate/inclusive-development-using-style-guides-improve-website