# Accessibility and Developers

DevFeed: [Accessibility and Developers](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/accessibility-and-developers-21669.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://paulirish.com/2012/accessibility-and-developers/>)

Author: Paul Irish

Published: 2012-06-01T07:19:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Paul Irish](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/paul-irish.md>)

Topics: [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [aria](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/aria.md>), [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/browsers.md>), [Usability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/usability.md>), [Web Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-development.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [aria](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aria.md>), [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/browsers.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [usability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/usability.md>), [web](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web.md>), [web-developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-developers.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that web developers need practical, experience-based guidance on accessibility. It emphasizes keyboard navigation as a crucial first step, explains that accessibility should not be equated with JavaScript-disabled functionality, and highlights the importance of understanding how screen readers, browsers, and ARIA markup affect users.

## Source excerpt

Jacob Thornton has an inspiring slide deck on accessibility that brings to fore some of the concerns that web developers have with implementing features around accessibility. For a very long time, developers have been told about making websites 'accessible'. Like it is a faucet that should be turned on or off. Till Victor Tsaran's demonstration of using a screenreader (which was in 2007 - a very long time since accessibility evangelism began) - very few web developers had any idea of the real immediate impact of implementing accessibility features. During a Nicholas Zakas & Victor Tsaran talk years ago I finally grokked the easiest rule for a first step towards accessibility. For such a long time, we conflated functionality while JavaScript-disabled with "being accessible". It took me years to learn that making it keyboard-navigable was the top priority. Just as a datapoint, The WebAIM survey results (published yesterday) reveal 98.6% of screenreader users have javascript enabled. What we need People like Jason Kiss and Steve Faulkner who detail the behavior and support in browsers and screenreaders are providing the developer community with invaluable knowledge, stuff that is far more worthwhile than publishing a yet another list of you-should-do-these-things. (See also my resources list in the semantics post). Most developers have no idea what effect adding ARIA markup to our documents has on people using screenreaders. We need that. Actual before-and-after video stuff makes this topic real. See zomigi's recent post: videos of screenreaders using ARIA, for great examples. Most developers have no idea how to implement ARIA. The W3C Primer that looks like a spec is not at all appropriate for a web developer audience. Just like it's valuable to witness an a11y usability session where you see how disabled people use your site, I think it'd be useful for the accessibility community to see how developers build, because thus far there has been a disconnect in communicati