Accessibility in 2024: Beyond Automated WCAG Testing
If you run Google Lighthouse on your Next.js application, fix every missing <img alt=""> attribute, resolve every color contrast warning, and achieve a perfect shiny 100 Accessibility score, you might feel a warm sense of accomplishment. But here is the uncomfortable truth: legally and ethically, you are not finished. Automated static analysis tools—even robust industry standards like axe-core—only physically detect approximately 30% of actual, real-world accessibility barriers.
Why isn't a perfect Lighthouse score enough?
A site can score a perfect 100 on automated testing tools and remain completely, impossibly broken for a blind user relying on a screen reader like NVDA or JAWS.
Here is a concrete example: Junior developers frequently implement beautifully animated custom dropdown menus using entirely <div> and <span> tags with intricate CSS animations. To a sighted user clicking a mouse, it works flawlessly—the menu opens, options appear, selections register. To a screen reader, it is entirely invisible. There are no semantic roles, no keyboard handlers, no focus management. If you cannot navigate your complex React multi-select component using strictly the Tab, Space, Enter, and Arrow keys, the component is objectively broken for approximately 15% of your user base.
How do I actually validate accessibility properly?
True inclusive design absolutely demands incorporating manual Keyboard and Screen Reader validation directly into your engineering team's Definition of Done. This is not optional—it is a professional standard.
Before a pull request is merged, an engineer must:
- Turn on macOS VoiceOver (or NVDA on Windows).
- Unplug their mouse entirely.
- Attempt to successfully complete the primary user flow (e.g., "Navigate to a product, add it to the cart, and proceed to checkout") using only the keyboard.
- Verify that every interactive element announces its role, state, and purpose audibly through the screen reader.
If they fail any step, the PR is rejected until the accessibility issues are resolved.
What are the most common advanced A11y mistakes developers make?
- Missing Focus Traps: When a Modal or Dialog opens, you must use JavaScript to physically trap the user's Tab key traversal strictly inside the modal boundary. Otherwise, they will inadvertently Tab and interact with the hidden webpage content behind the overlay.
- Static ARIA States: Setting
aria-expanded="false"once during initial render and never updating it dynamically. Your React components must actively toggle ARIA boolean strings as interactive states change on the client—menus opening, accordions expanding, loading states resolving. - Ignoring Motion Sensitivity: You must utilize the CSS media query
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)to automatically disable heavy GSAP animations, parallax scrolling effects, and auto-playing carousels for users diagnosed with vestibular disorders who experience genuine physical discomfort from aggressive motion.
The Bottom Line
Web accessibility is not an arbitrary checklist you complete for SEO bonus points or legal compliance checkboxes. It is the fundamental practice of providing equitable digital access to all human beings. Always write strong semantic HTML first—native <button>, <select>, and <input> elements have decades of built-in accessibility algorithms that are incredibly difficult and time-consuming to replicate manually with divs and ARIA.
