5 Tools to Help Make Your Vue.js App Accessible to Everyone
So you’ve heard a lot of talk about something called accessibility. Maybe you’ve even heard about people suing large companies for providing inaccessible services. But do you know exactly what accessibility means?
Fortunately, accessibility is not too difficult to understand or implement, once you commit to it. Once you’ve learnt what accessibility is, you’re able to put that theory into practice by writing accessible Vue.js apps.
What Is Accessibility?
Accessibility is a popular buzzword on the web, but what exactly does it mean? It turns out the name is pretty descriptive. Accessibility is simply a measure of how usable a web application is for all types of people.
Not everyone experiences the web the same way. Some people have impairments which may affect their hearing or eyesight. Some can’t access modern hardware or high-speed internet, and people often need to use the web in less than ideal conditions. Accessibility is about making sure all those people can still use a web application as smoothly as possible.
Why Is Accessibility Important?
Accessibility is important because when an application is highly accessible, it can serve as many people as possible. When someone provides a service or information on a website, their goal is for other people to use that service or read that information.
Optimizing for accessibility ensures that as few people are unable to use the web application as possible. Furthermore, web apps that are more accessible are generally ranked higher in search results. This allows even more people to find and use more accessible web applications.
Common Developer Mistakes That Hurt Accessibility
Many web applications are less accessible than they could be. This is usually the result of mistakes on the part of those who built them. Some common accessibility mistakes that developers make when building apps are:
Using Inaccessible Libraries
You might rely on third party libraries to save time and effort when you develop your apps. Unfortunately, not all libraries take accessibility seriously, and it can be difficult to identify the good ones. It’s easy to end up accidentally lowering the accessibility of your applications this way.
Neglecting Semantic HTML When Building Components
Semantic HTML is HTML whose meaning as well as its structure is correct. Every HTML tag has an inherent purpose, which assistive technology uses to infer the meaning of its content. For example, the header tag marks the header of a website. A screen reader should be able to announce that anything inside a header tag is a website header.
Unfortunately, nothing stops you from using a tag for the wrong purpose. Another common example is the use of a button tag to act like a link, or vice versa.
Writing HTML in this way hurts accessibility, because assistive technology can no longer be sure of the purpose of any HTML element. It may end up producing confusing or frustrating output for the users of the technology. For maximum accessibility, you should alwayswrite semantic HTML, even if it means a bit more work.
Not Testing for Accessibility
Building a web app can often be an arduous task with demanding deadlines. Between the haste to finish features and the burden of testing other aspects of the software, accessibility testing takes a back seat. You might be tempted to deploy an application to production before you’ve tested it for accessibility issues.
Why? The testing requires time, and may require extensive changes to the application’s code. Buttesting a web applicationis an indispensable part of the development process. You should test your application’s accessibility just as rigorously as any other aspect.
Tools That Improve Accessibility When Writing Vue.js
Thankfully, tools exist to help solve these problems. The following five tools can help you write more accessible Vue.js apps:
WAVE is a collection of tools that helps developers automatically test their apps for accessibility issues. While WAVE is not a substitute for end-user testing, it can still help you catch many accessibility issues.
WAVE provides an online testing tool on its website. It also offers browser extensions, and several other tools to help with accessibility testing for many types of web apps.
2.Vue-Announcer
Many of the cues that web apps use to communicate activity, like progress bars and loading indicators, are purely visual. People with visual disabilities or those using screen readers cannot percieve them.
Vue-announcer is a library that lets you announce changes in your Vue.js apps in a way that everyone can access.
3.Vue-Skip-To
Vue-skip-to is a library created to allow people using a screen reader to skip directly to the main content of a Vue.js application. This is useful because many web apps have navigation links and other elements before the main content. These are easy for some users to skip, but can be troublesome and frustrating to use with a screen reader.
4.ESLint Plugin
ESLint is a tool that helps you write better JavaScript by analyzing your code and checking it for errors.
This tool is an ESLint plugin which helps you ensure the structure of your Vue.js components conforms to accessibility rules.
When installed, this plugin analyses all Vue.js files and points out problematic code. you’re able to then maximize accessibility while writing your apps, instead of having to change code after the testing phase.
5.Vuetensils
A big source of accessibility issues in apps is the use of inaccessible component libraries. Vuetensils is a library of Vue.js components.
These components are optimized for minimum size, maximum accessibility, ease of use, and ease of styling. You can save time and use these pre-built components without harming the accessibility of your applications.
Accessibility in Vue.js Is Easy
Accessibility is about making sure that everyone can use your application in any context. Maximizing accessibility is important to make sure an application can be used by as many people as possible.
Developers often make common but preventable accessibility mistakes when building their apps. Common problems include not testing and writing non-semantic HTML. But with the aid of a few tools, it’s easier to write highly accessible Vue.js apps.
Planning your apps to effectively serve disabled people is paramount in today’s world. Is your software prepared?
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