Learn How To Translate Wireframes Into Accessible HTML/CSS at SmashingConf
If you were at SmashingConf San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, you may have run into some members of the Deque team. If you didn’t make it out to SmashingConf SF, don’t worry – we’ll also be showing up at the SmashingConfs in Toronto, Freiburg, and New York. We’re really excited about our partnership with Smashing this year, and so we wanted to share some information about the workshop our team will be conducting at each SmashingConf and what else we’ll have to offer attendees.
Hands-On Accessibility
Our workshop walks you through the design and development process of a web component and how to build accessibility into every step of the process including analyzing a wireframe from an accessibility perspective, making coding decisions to optimize for accessibility, implementing that code, testing your code, and troubleshooting.
The workshop begins with a brief introduction of how accessibility fits into the development process, and the rest of the workshop runs like a miniature sprint. You will work with our Principal UI Designer Aaron Pearlman and our Principle UI Developer Harris Schneidermann to:
- Define project requirements and the scope of the sprint based on existing wireframes
- Prioritize and assign tasks
- Identify how one would normally approach building the web components
- Identify what kind of accessibility challenges would show up
- Discuss how to solve those issues and the pros/cons of different approaches
- Build the things
- Test the things
- What worked? What didn’t? Why didn’t it work? How would you fix?
- Share practical lessons attendees can remember and apply when they build these components in the future
This is a highly interactive workshop focused on giving you practical experience integrating accessibility into the development process and helping you build your accessibility problem-solving skills.
Who should attend this workshop?
Our workshop is targeted at front-end designers and developers. There are parts of the workshop where you can code along with the presenter, but if you’re not comfortable coding, that’s totally fine. We’ve worked hard to make sure you don’t have to be a developer to follow the developer sections, and you don’t have to be a designer to follow the designer sections. By participating in both sections, we can build a more holistic understanding of the impact we make on accessibility. We also encourage attendees to team up and learn from each other’s strengths and skill sets.
Sign up for the axe-pro beta!
In addition to spreading the accessibility love at SmashingConf, we are also looking for front-end developers, testers, and designers to join the axe-pro beta! Axe-pro equips front-end teams to take their accessibility testing even further without having to become accessibility experts. It includes a series of testing modules that take you through an easy-to-follow, guided process that helps find accessibility issues that would otherwise require manual testing. SmashingConf is a great opportunity to learn more about axe-pro and see it in action. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can apply to join the beta today.
Join us at SmashingConf
SmashingConf is a welcoming and inclusive community for front-end developers and designers. If you’re looking for practical content delivered by leaders of the front-end community, we definitely recommend checking it out.
SmashingConf San Francisco has already happened, but you can still connect with the Deque Team at upcoming SmashingConfs in Toronto, Freiburg, and New York. At each conference, we’ll be presenting our workshop, a lunch presentation on how to perform an accessibility audit, and a lightning talk about our new axe-pro beta program. Don’t forget to say hi to the team at our exhibit table and grab a t-shirt!
