braindump of Kevin Lamping on Accessibility at HTML5.tx

WCAG 2.0 is an accessibilities standard for web sites. HTML is mostly accessible. You have to support screen readers and that can be tricky. We have the choice of giving accessibility, but a disabled person cannot just turn off a disability. As developers we are the gatekeepers to accessibilities. Accessibility just has to be part of our experience. The semantic HTML5 tags that replace plain-Jane div allow browsers to pronounce the delineations in layout in accessibility. A browser needs to be able to speak to an accessibility API as does the accessibility agent. The two will talk to each other through the API. ARIA, accessible rich internet applications. ARIA works by adding role attributes to HTML5 tags. ARIA is part of the W3C spec. <header role="banner"> is an example. There are HTML5 tags to ARIA role translations like this. main is an HTML5 element added because ARIA shaped it. <main role="main"> Tabable forms are an example of accessibility for Parkinson's. Native accessibility for video controls is baked into canned HTML5 video controls. If you are going to make you're own controls use buttons instead of divs as one cannot tab to a div. The figure and figcaption tags tie images to captions. The aria-labelledby tag attribute will specify a value that another tag will hold in an id attribute, binding the two together.