Part IV — The Reach
8 Accessibility
GoalShip interfaces that work with a keyboard, a screen reader, and low vision — by default, not as a retrofit.
- 8.1 Accessibility Overview Perceivable, operable, understandable, robust — four principles that cover every rule you'll ever be given.
- 8.2 Keyboard Accessibility Everything clickable must be reachable by Tab, activatable by Enter or Space, and visibly focused.
- 8.3 Screen Reader Semantics decide what gets announced — ARIA patches the gaps, and wrong ARIA is worse than none.
- 8.4 Focus Management When the UI changes, you must decide where focus goes — the browser only gets it right on full page loads.
- 8.5 Color Contrast 4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text and UI controls — and colour must never be the only signal.
- 8.6 Accessibility Tools Automation finds about a third of real issues — know exactly which third, and cover the rest by hand.
- 8.7 How to fix accessibility Audit, triage by user impact, fix at the component level, then gate it so it can't come back.
Capstone
Make a custom dropdown fully accessible. Document every role, every key binding, and where focus goes on open, select, and close.