How ARIA Works and What's New in ARIA 1.2

The Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) provides a rich vocabulary of roles, properties and states to make web resources more accessible and comply with WCAG 2.1 standards. But most developers have little understanding of how ARIA works, often apply ARIA technology in ways that make pages less accessible or confusing to screen reader users.

In this session participants will learn how ARIA is designed to make web pages more accessible and some of the new features of ARIA 1.2, including the standardization of the Accessible Object Model (AOM) to allow developers more flexibility in using Javascript to apply ARIA to web pages.

The session will also highlight the ARIA authoring practices designed to help developers, designers and quality assurance professionals understand how to apply ARIA to web pages to make accessible interactive widgets. Complex ARIA enabled widgets for menus, date pickers, and image carousels will also be demonstrated to help people learn more about keyboard interaction requirements and the screen reader experience.

Participants will learn how the ARIA Authoring Practices can be used to provide feedback to developers and designers on how to create accessible widgets when accessibility issues are discovered. Information will also be provided on the W3C working and community groups working on making ARIA a more robust and interoperable standard to improve the experience of the web for people with disabilities.

Key points:

• Basic features of ARIA roles, properties and states.
• Learn how to use the ARIA Authoring Practices to provide feedback to developers and designers.
• Understand the basic operation of screen readers and how they support the use of ARIA markup.
• Understand keyboard testing and keyboard focus styling.