Ask HN: What are your biggest Web Accessibility Complaints?

by jfaucett on 5/22/2017, 9:53 PM with 2 comments

Hey HNers,

I'm in the process of building a web project and want to make sure anyone with disabilities can use it as best as possible. The project has a lot of javascript and is very interactive i.e. a true webapp.

Anyways I'd like to know what your biggest complaints and gripes are with web applications in terms of accessibility. What do a lot of apps miss or fail to get right? What's annoying?

Thanks in advance!

  • by robmc_ on 5/23/2017, 4:17 PM

    There are a ton of things to consider for overall accessibility however one thing developers can do with limited knowledge of accessibility concepts is to use the keyboard to interact with your site(s). Can keyboard-only users complete all the tasks a mouse user can? If there are mouse-driven event handlers on controls, are there redundant keyboard event handlers where applicable? Are labels explicitly associated with form fields? Do images provide proper textual equivalents? Do color schemes provide sufficient color contrast per WCAG (https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-cont...)?

  • by Cozumel on 5/22/2017, 10:32 PM

    A lot of users on my sites are older so they need bigger font sizes, so it's good for that and also make sure that if they zoom in on a page it doesn't break layout etc.