We hope for our web applications to be as beautiful, performant, and accessible as possible, but sometimes things get in the way and the outcome is not as good as we hoped. In her talk at Async, Eva Ferreira walked us through a few of her failed attempts at developing accessible web applications. She went through different accessibility assumptions and myths that she wrongly believed to be true and how to avoid them by properly testing for accessibility.

Check out our catch-up with Eva following her talk…

Can you tell us a bit about you and the work that you do?

I’m a Front-end engineer currently working as a tech lead at Mabl. Besides my day to day job, I’ve been teaching web development for more than ten years to a wide range of students at different universities and bootcamps.

What was the inspiration for your recent talk?

Myself 😅 It’s hard to learn something new and at least for me, it’s hard to forgive myself when I make mistakes. This talk is about learning how to improve the accessibility of your web application while embracing the mistakes that you may make along the way.

Any key highlights / takeaways for anyone who missed it?

• Focus on the basics (color contrast, keyboard navigation, outlines)
• If you use ARIA, test on a screen reader
• Remember that an accessible website will provide a better experience to many users, not just users with disabilities

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?

It’s ok to make mistakes. Always learn from them and just try to avoid repeating them!

Missed Eva’s talk or want to watch it again? Check it out here…