Common accessibility mistakes and how to avoid them

For some, accessibility conjures nightmares of garish focus rings and high-contrast fonts. For others, it’s snooze-inducing checklists ad nauseam.

With the onerous checklists and guidelines and complicated wording, accessibility can seem like a chore that takes a beautiful design and makes it…less beautiful. But accessible web design really boils down to a few basic principles and when you have these as your first principles when starting a project, you can save your self, your team, and your clients hours of headaches around accessibility testing.

This presentation will describe a few basic principles to keep in mind when building accessible web experiences, provide explanations and examples of these principles in code, and identify common accessibility pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Topics to be covered:

• Simple JavaScript techniques for ensuring accessible components
• CSS properties that affect accessibility
• How to use modern CSS (flexbox, grid) without compromising accessibility

Attendees will leave with:

• A mental framework for building accessible web experiences.
• The ability to avoid common accessibility pitfalls.
• JS and CSS code samples to use in future projects.