Having listened to many people talk about JavaScript libraries at this year’s @media, one thing that didn’t seem to crop up was the topic of the accessibility of these libraries. I’ll freely admit that I have almost zero hands-on knowledge of the various libraries - I’m simply aware that they exist and that for many tasks they are a real time-saver (I’m still a roll-yer-own, no matter how awkward kinda JavaScripter!). I do, however, hear anecdotally that many of these libraries create some inaccessible code which really need not be there. But anecdotes are really only any good for the dinner table, so here’s what I’d like to ask:
- Are you using a JavaScript library?
- Are you accessibility-aware?
If the answer to both of these questions is "yes", please drop me a line and please state the obvious stuff (like name, contact etc) but more importantly what JavaScript library you use most and what you perceive to be the key accessibility issues. I would like to build up some decent stats on this, so please do take a moment to add your feedback, no matter how trivial you may think it is. The aim? Well, perhaps colectively we can help to remove some of the accessibility issues in the current libraries rather than complain about what’s wrong, but we need a place to start. And this could be it!