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Web Accessibility Resources

A list of favorite resources. Please make an issue or PR to add!

Introductory materials

This is a place to start if you're not familiar with web accessibility. It's also a good list of resources to send to your boss, coworker, or vendor if they give you a blank stare when you say something like "keyboard navigability."

Working with vendors

Checklists

In my experience, checklists are the most effective way to audit your code base and catch bugs.

Manual tools and screen readers

Automated tools

Automated tools are useful to catch issues that a computer can detect programmatically like color contrast and header level, but catch only about 70% of accessibility issues. An automated tool cannot tell you if your content makes sense, if the order in which a user perceives it is helpful, or generally if what you've built is usable.

Data visualization, maps, and SVG

The text below is an excerpt from an article that I wrote about the basics of web accessibility for data visualization. You can read the whole thing at the Data Visualization Society's blog, Nightingale.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are limited in scope and do not explicitly address data visualization, other than using charts as an example of something for which you need to provide a text alternative. W3C’s tutorials recommend a short text alternative and a long description, which in their example is a table.

While the standards aren’t clear on the implementation details of charts or maps, they do discuss some of the techniques we use to convey meaning with data:

  • Color (standards 1.4.1, 1.4.3, 1.4.11): Use colors with a high contrast ratio and consider what additional visual cues (like patterns) could differentiate variables. Automated tools can be helpful to detect color contrast. Consider using a browser extension like Colorblinding to check your work.

  • Interaction (standards 2.1, 1.4.13, 2.4.3): Users should be able to do anything with a keyboard that they can do with a mouse. For data vis, that might include a tooltip that shows on hover, or a filter that is triggered by a click. If a user navigates through your data visualization with a keyboard, they should be able to do so in an order that makes sense. Users should be able to exit this interaction and not get stuck in a loop.

  • Animation (standards 1.2, 2.2, 2.3): Provide alternatives for time-based media. Do not use flashing images. Users should have control over the timing of animations.

User research resources

Team familiarity with the guidelines, regular internal audits, and automated tools can help you design with accessibility in mind and catch bugs that you are introducing to the code base. But only user research will tell you if what you're building truly works for everyone. There are organizations you can pay for help with user research.