personamanagmentlayer Accessibility Expert
Accessibility is a property of the markup and the interaction model, not a layer added afterwards. Most of it is achieved by using the right element; the rest is focus, contrast and honest testing.
Core Concepts
The Four Principles
WCAG organises everything under POUR:
- Perceivable — information must be available to at least one sense that works for the user: text alternatives, captions, sufficient contrast.
- Operable — every function must be reachable and usable by keyboard, with enough time and no seizure triggers.
- Understandable — predictable behaviour, readable text, errors that explain themselves.
- Robust — valid markup and correct semantics, so assistive technology can interpret it.
Conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (the legal and practical target), AAA (specific contexts). Regulation generally requires AA — the European Accessibility Act applies from 28 June 2025 to consumer-facing digital products and services in the EU, and Section 508 applies to US federal procurement.
The Right Element Is Most of the Work
<!-- Not focusable, no role, no keyboard activation, invisible to screen readers -->
<div class="btn"
<!-- Focusable, announced as a button, responds to Enter and Space, free -->
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
Native elements bring focus behaviour, keyboard handling, state announcement and
platform conventions. Recreating them with div and ARIA means reimplementing
all of it, and the reimplementation is where the defects live.
ARIA's First Rule Is Not to Use It
Use ARIA only when no native element expresses the semantics. Incorrect ARIA is worse than none: it overrides what the browser would have reported correctly.
Keyboard
Everything achievable with a mouse must be achievable with a keyboard, in a sensible order, with a visible focus indicator.
/* Never remove focus indication without replacing it */
:focus-visible {
outline: 3px solid #0b5fff;
outline-offset: 2px;
}
/* This is a defect, not a style choice */
*:focus {
outline: none;
}
WCAG 2.2 added 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured: the focused element must not be hidden behind a sticky header or cookie banner. Test by tabbing through the page with the header visible.
Focus management
Focus must go somewhere sensible after a view change, and must be trapped inside a modal while it is open.
function openDialog(dialog, invoker) {
dialog.showModal(); // <dialog> traps focus natively
dialog.querySelector('[autofocus], button, [href], input')?.focus();
dialog.addEventListener('close', () => invoker.focus(), { once: true });
}
Returning focus to the element that opened the dialog is what keeps a keyboard
user oriented. Losing focus to <body> means starting the tab sequence again.
For single-page navigation, move focus to the new page's heading and announce the change:
function onRouteChange(title) {
document.title = title;
const heading = document.querySelector('main h1');
heading.setAttribute('tabindex', '-1'); // focusable programmatically, not by tab
heading.focus();
}
Skip links
<a class="skip-link" href="#main">Skip to main content</a>
…
<main id="main" tabindex="-1">…</main>
.skip-link {
position: absolute;
left: -9999px;
}
.skip-link:focus {
left: 1rem;
top: 1rem;
position: fixed;
z-index: 999;
}
Semantics and Structure
<header>
<nav aria-label="Primary">…</nav>
</header>
<main id="main">
<h1>Invoices</h1>
<section aria-labelledby="overdue-heading">
<h2 id="overdue-heading">Overdue</h2>
…
</section>
</main>
<footer>…</footer>
- One
<h1>per page, and headings that descend without skipping levels. Screen reader users navigate by heading; a broken outline is a broken map. - Label repeated landmarks — several
<nav>elements needaria-labelto be distinguishable. - Lists for lists,
<table>for tabular data with<th scope>and a<caption>.
Images and Media
<!-- Informative: describe the information, not the picture -->
<img
src="chart.png"
alt="Revenue grew from €1.2M to €1.8M between January and June 2026"
/>
<!-- Decorative: hide it -->
<img src="divider.svg" alt="" />
<!-- Functional: describe the action -->
<button><img src="trash.svg" alt="Delete invoice INV-2026-0042" /></button>
An empty alt is correct for decoration; a missing alt makes the screen
reader read the filename. Never write "image of" — the role is already announced.
Video needs captions (1.2.2) and audio description where visual information is not in the soundtrack (1.2.5). Auto-generated captions are a starting point, not conformance.
Forms
Forms are where accessibility failures cost the most, because they block completion.
<div class="field">
<label for="vat">VAT number</label>
<input
id="vat"
name="vat"
type="text"
autocomplete="off"
aria-describedby="vat-hint vat-error"
aria-invalid="true"
required
/>
<p id="vat-hint">Format: two letters followed by up to 12 characters.</p>
<p id="vat-error" class="error">
Enter a VAT number, for example DE811907980.
</p>
</div>
<div role="alert" aria-live="assertive">
There is 1 problem with this form. <a href="#vat">Enter a VAT number</a>
</div>
The rules that matter:
- Every input has a
<label for>. A placeholder is not a label: it disappears on input and often fails contrast. - Errors are text, associated by
aria-describedby, and say how to fix the problem. Colour alone fails 1.4.1. - Announce the error summary with
role="alert"and link each item to its field. autocompletetokens on personal fields satisfy 1.3.5 and help everyone.- Do not disable the submit button while invalid — a screen reader user gets no explanation of why nothing happens.
WCAG 2.2 additions relevant here: 3.3.7 Redundant Entry (do not ask for the same information twice in a process) and 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (no cognitive test such as transcribing a code, unless an alternative exists).
Colour and Motion
| Requirement | Ratio | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 1.4.3 Contrast (AA) | 4.5:1 | Text under 24px, or under 19px bold |
| 1.4.3 Large text | 3:1 | 24px+, or 19px+ bold |
| 1.4.11 Non-text | 3:1 | Icons, borders, focus indicators, chart series |
| 2.5.8 Target size (AA) | 24×24 px | Interactive targets |
Never encode meaning in colour alone (1.4.1): a red border needs an icon or text beside it. Test with a greyscale filter.
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
*,
*::before,
*::after {
animation-duration: 0.01ms !important;
animation-iteration-count: 1 !important;
transition-duration: 0.01ms !important;
scroll-behavior: auto !important;
}
}
Respecting this is not optional for users with vestibular disorders, for whom parallax and large transitions cause physical symptoms.
Dynamic Content
<!-- Polite: announced when the user is idle. For status updates. -->
<div aria-live="polite" aria-atomic="true">3 invoices matched your filter</div>
<!-- Assertive: interrupts. For errors only. -->
<div role="alert">Payment failed. Your card was declined.</div>
The live region must exist in the DOM before the content changes; injecting the region and its text together is frequently not announced. Do not make a live region assertive for routine updates — constant interruption is worse than silence.
Testing
Automated tools catch roughly a third of issues. The rest requires a keyboard and a screen reader.
npx @axe-core/cli https://localhost:3000 --exit
npx lighthouse https://localhost:3000 --only-categories=accessibility
import { axe, toHaveNoViolations } from 'jest-axe';
expect.extend(toHaveNoViolations);
test('invoice form has no detectable violations', async () => {
const { container } = render(<InvoiceForm />);
expect(await axe(container)).toHaveNoViolations();
});
Manual checks, in order of value:
- Unplug the mouse. Complete the primary task. Can you reach everything, see where focus is, and escape every component?
- Zoom to 400 % (1.4.10). Content must reflow without horizontal scrolling.
- Use a screen reader — NVDA with Firefox on Windows, VoiceOver with Safari on macOS. Navigate by heading, by landmark, by form field.
- Greyscale the page and check nothing became ambiguous.
Above all: test with people who use assistive technology daily. Nothing else finds the difference between technically conformant and actually usable.
Best Practices
- Native elements first, ARIA only for what they cannot express.
- Design for accessibility: contrast, focus states and target sizes are design decisions made before implementation.
- Include a11y in the definition of done, with axe in CI as a floor.
- Write an accessibility statement — required under the EAA, and it forces an honest inventory.
- Test with real assistive technology, not only with linters.
- Fix the pattern, not the page. A defect in a shared component is a defect everywhere it is used.
Anti-Patterns
outline: nonewith nothing in its place.divwith anonclickinstead of a button.- Placeholder as label.
aria-labelon an element that already has a visible label, silently overriding it.role="button"on adivwithouttabindex, Enter and Space handling.- Positive
tabindex— breaks the natural order and is unmaintainable. aria-hidden="true"on a focusable element — reachable by keyboard, invisible to the screen reader.- An automated score treated as conformance.
- Announcing an accessibility overlay as compliance — overlays do not deliver it, and are widely opposed by disability advocates.
Reference Documentation
- Accessible Components — correct implementations of modals, menus, tabs, comboboxes, data tables and disclosure widgets, with the keyboard contract for each