Building Accessible Websites

I just want to share a quick update of where I’m at in my coding journey. I have been coding non-stop for over a year now and I’m currently wrapping up sprint 2 (week 8) in an intensive web developer program through Technigo. It has been fun and challenging from the start.

Since I have completed another sprint, I wanted to share what we focused on this week because it never seems to amaze me how much there is still to learn and that is what I love the most about programming!

laptop on top of a wooden table, with text on screen saying: I design and develop experiences that make people’s lives simple.

This week we focused on web accessibility and cross-browser testing. These were new concepts for me and there were so many things I didn’t even think about before this week. When I thought about accessibility, I only thought about how my projects looked on different screen sizes. And in my head I thought:

“Oh my web site looks good on the browser I am on.”

But it never occurred to me that others may not be seeing what I am seeing. And I know that might sound silly or maybe you are not really following but this week really changed my perspective. Although this week was challenging in many ways, I learned a lot! And I still have a lot to learn in regards to accessibility and cross-browser testing.

Here are somethings I would like to share about cross browser testing. It is important to remember that “you are not your users” and I really resonated with that because I get stuck in my own head sometimes. There are users who use Microsoft edge, Firefox, and Internet explorer just to name a few and it is important to remember too test your web sites and make sure they work on an acceptable number of browsers. Not all browsers support all the latest CSS and JavaScript features.

Icons: Microsoft edge, Firefox, and Internet explorer from left to right.

The biggest takeaway and this might sound naive, was that as a developer it is my responsibility to create websites that can be used with the aid of assistive technologies like screen readers, or with the use of only the keyboard or non mouse features.

As for accessibility the aim of accessibility is to make your websites/apps usable by as many people in as many contexts as possible. Right out of the box semantic HTML is accessible and can be used with assistive technologies.

These are just a handful of takeaways from this week and I could have kept going because we learned so much this week. Perhaps another blog post is necessary… This is just scratching the surface of cross-browser testing and accessibility but I look forward to learn more about it and implementing these two key concepts in all of my projects to come.