A New Intuit Open Source Release: accessibility-snippets
Intuit Software Engineer Kendall Gassner is excited to launch accessibility-snippets, a set of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attribute templates to make it easier for developers to create accessible react components.
Accessibility is vital to Intuit, as we work to power prosperity for everyone. As one of 700 trained Accessibility Champions at Intuit, Kendall takes inclusive design and engineering to heart. “I want to encourage all developers to create inclusive components and code,” says Kendall, which is why she began working on accessibility-snippets.
Code snippets are templates that make it easier to enter repeating code patterns, such as loops or conditional-statements. Accessibility-snippets is intended to make it easier to repeat accessible patterns, with most of the snippets relating to WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative — Accessible Rich Internet Applications) standards and guidelines.
For example, typing DialogAria produces the following template:
role='dialog',
aria-labelledby='',
aria-describedby=' ',
aria-modal={true},Accessibility-snippets includes 13 React snippets, for use cases ranging from buttons to links to text boxes, and a CSS snippet to add a reduced motion media query alongside transition animations.
Kendall hopes accessibility-snippets can be valuable to a wide range of developers. “There are many ARIA attributes and roles,” she says, “and it is not always easy to know when and when not to use these attributes if you have not been trained in accessibility.” Accessibility-snippets allows developers with less experience in ARIA to easily add it to their code and familiarize themselves with ARIA standards, creating a more accessible internet and world.
Kendall plans to continue growing the project, with plans to add several additional ARIA role attributes in the near future. In the spirit of Open Source, Kendall welcomes conversations and contributions in the accessibility-snippets GitHub repo: “If you encounter any problems or have any feature suggestions we would love to hear about them!”
