Coding Accessibility: An interview with Steve Faulkner
Posted on February 21, 2014
by Sarah Horton
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3 comments
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An edited version of this interview appears in Chapter 6 of A Web for Everyone.
Steve Faulkner has been an accessibility engineer since 2001, first with Vision Australia and currently with The Paciello Group. He has a hand in developing HTML5 and WAI-ARIA specifications as a member of W3C working groups, and is editor of W3C specifications on HTML5, Using ARIA in HTML, accessibility APIs, and text alternatives. In short, Steve has accessibility chops.
Because much of what’s needed is beneath the surface of a page, we asked Steve to explain what user experience designers should know about how code supports accessibility.
Elements of an accessible user interface
Web accessibility is largely about providing the information needed to make a user interface accessible to assistive technology, or AT. This is accomplished via an accessibility application programming interface, or API–a standardized way of specifying elements of an interface. A primary goal of an API is interoperability, where different devices and software [...]