Accessibility

Defining Accessibility for the Digital Experience team

Surface accessibility issues on about.gitlab.com

Open an issue to the Buyer Experience repository and add the dex-category::accessibility label.

Resolving Accesibility issues

Quick and dirty (Start here)

I have run Axe Devtools

I have run Google Lighthouse

Notes about tabbing across browsers

Different browsers respond differently to tabbing through interactive elements (like links, buttons, form inputs, etc.) on a page. Chrome and chromium based browsers will have tab move to the next focusable element and shift + tab will have move back a focusable element. This is done to assist folks with screen readers.

Safari doesn’t use tab navigation by default. The user has to go into Safari’s setting and check the box to turn on tabbed navigation. Mozilla is being true to operating system settings in Mac OS, which means you also need to turn it on.

Related resources: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52783375/anchor-with-href-not-taking-focus-in-safari-even-with-all-accessibility-keyboard https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11704828/how-to-allow-keyboard-focus-of-links-in-firefox

  • Properly set tabindex: You can use the tabindex attribute to specify the order in which elements receive focus when the user uses the tab key.

  • Properly use ARIA roles: ARIA roles provide a way to make web content is accessible to people with disabilities. They can be used to define the role of an element, helping assistive technologies understand how to interact with it.

  • Consistent design: Ensure that your design visually indicates which element currently has keyboard focus (ex: by changing the color or outline). This visual cue will help all users, not just those using assistive technologies.

More comprehensive testing

Tools like Axe and Google Lighthouse only take you so far, and are a good starting point for us. Using screen reader technology like VoiceOver on MacOS to test on a real webpage is needed to reach AA compliance.

Run through this Accessibility spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pCfGv8xHjY39Oeft37pGjgot_lg0_j3cSyty0H9njv8/edit#gid=0

Example of testing accessibility on our home page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtVMFUQLJEE

Last modified September 19, 2024: Create DEX engineering subfolder (fb1fed75)