Video: Accessible React Components Guide

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) provides a set of roles that convey the accessibility semantics of structures on a web page. It helps in making web content and applications more accessible to people with disabilities.

The main focus of Sid's talk is on building accessible React components, with an emphasis on accessibility.

'ARIA disabled' is an attribute that keeps an element in the tab order and allows it to be focusable, unlike the 'disabled' attribute which removes elements from the tab order. 'ARIA disabled' is preferred to make the element accessible while indicating that it is not currently interactive.

Sid recommends the Axe family of tools, which includes plugins for various environments like CLI, Jest, and Storybook. These tools help catch accessibility issues, but he emphasizes that manual testing is also necessary.

Sid suggests providing clear information about the state and conditions of UI elements, such as using 'ARIA disabled' and 'ARIA described by' to make elements accessible while explaining why they are disabled. This approach improves the user experience for both sighted and screen reader users.

No, Sid is not an accessibility expert. He refers to himself as a 'silly React guy' who has learned about accessibility from working with experts over the past year.

Sid works on the design systems team at GitHub, where he maintains the React component library.

Sid emphasizes using the correct HTML elements, like using a button instead of a div for interactive actions, to improve accessibility. However, he acknowledges that this is just one part of making web experiences accessible.

The speaker is Sid, whose full name is Siddharth. He prefers to go by Sid to avoid mispronunciations of his name.

Sid identified that using buttons for tabs can be problematic for screen reader users because it doesn't convey hierarchical or contextual information well. Instead, he suggests using ARIA roles like 'tablist' and 'tab' to provide better accessibility semantics.