The web is accessible by default. It was designed with features to make accessibility possible, and these have been part of the platform pretty much from the beginning. In recent times, inspectable accessibility trees have made it easier to see how things work in practice. In this post we’ll look at how “good” client-side code (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) improves the experience of users of assistive technologies, and how we can use accessibility trees to help verify our work on the user experience.

People browse differently

Assistive Technology (AT) is the umbrella term for tools that help people operate a computer in the way that suits them. Braille displays, for instance, let blind users understand what’s on their screen by conveying that information in braille format in real time. VoiceOver, a utility for Mac and iOS, converts text into speech, so that people can listen to an interface. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a tool that lets people operate an interface by talking into a microphone.