Accessibility: The future of Web Development
While in recent years, many improvement to the website in general start to be better day by day, and now with the new Web 3.0, there's one front that seems to be forgotten by people.
Right now, we are living in the future and at the crossroad of the next-gen of Web Development. Many said that Web 3.0 or Blockchain-based (decentralized) is the future of web development.
Web 3.0 will probably dominate website development for the next decades. Developer often neglects one of the aspects of web development which is accessibility.
What is Accessibility?
Accessibility can be explained to make applications more inclusive and easier to navigate for those with special needs. With that in mind, accessibility is significant in this time and age. More access to the internet across the globe also means more people with a wide range of special needs started to have access to the internet.
Accessibility itself isn’t a new concept in the programming world. Ever since the code was invented, people have been trying to make it more accessible for everyone to start using it, starts from command-line-based systems to graphical-based systems slowly trying to integrate the aspect of ease of use with the complexity of a system itself, and we can’t deny that sometimes we need to sacrifice something and most of the time “we” prefer to make the program more complex with the sacrifice of the ease of use itself.
The Current state of Accessibility
Most developers did not plan for accessibility when creating a new system or website, with A11y as one of the initiatives launched by big companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to help address this issue and raise awareness or an IBM-based initiative with the same purpose.
Both projects aim to help people make the web more accessible and easy to navigate. IBM is more focused on providing a tool to test and help develop a better experience for people with special needs. A11yProjects wants to give easy and concise steps for developers to follow when creating a new system or website.
The future of Accessibility
Talking about the future of website development is quite a stretch in itself. I think the future state of accessibility is quite mixed. Because even with all initiatives launched by big companies and more developers caring about accessibility, however, the rise of Web 3.0 has accelerated the pace of development and more people motivated to learn more about web development, but it also has become a distraction for newer developers who started learning web development and who are not familiar with accessibility could result in a long time for adoption by the masses.
We can only hope there will be an easy way for developers to entirely test and have more comprehensive knowledge of developing and maintaining a website with accessibility in mind.