Web Accessibility

Clifford Ouma, a React Native developer, talented speaker, and the campus expert from the Moi University, performed live for a workshop on Web Accessibility and why we should care.

Learners explored:

  • Accessibility for the Web
  • Why accessibility is important and how it helps
  • Accessibility guidelines, Section 508, and WCAG 2.1
  • Using Funkify to test out the UX of disabiled people
  • Q&A pertaining to accessibility in the web and the like

Lots of students that use Bootstrap at our community had absolutely no idea what the role and aria-* attributes are about. The longer we wait for an application to be out there being developed, the harder it gets to make it accessible, as we discussed in the talk about the best time to start working on accessibility features. That is why we need to start early if we plan to build an accessible application. The event was success in achieving awareness regarding the same.

I loved the everything about the workshop, especially how Clifford pointed out how popular attractive UI techniques and components are often not as accessible, which affects a significant fraction of the application’s users. The workshop was really descriptive, and all aspects of situational disabilities and permanent impairments were talked about by Clifford. I believe the standards and tools discussed will help web developers develop more accessible applications, and it will be educating to non-web/non-front-end developers too in assisting in and promoting the development of more accessible applications.

My observation was also that Clifford mentioned that companies like Microsoft and Apple are known to have the most accessible web and non-web applications, which both are companies running the world’s most-used commercial operating systems. I think that is a lesson that thinking from a lower level gives us a better idea of how we can make our applications more accessible.