Can we please start with HTML?

Friday, March 22nd, 2019

I’ve never been one to jump on to a library or framework bandwagon. I skipped right past Bootstrap and don’t venture into the worlds of React, Vue or Angular. Granted, jquery has been in my toolbox for a while but I’m moving to vanilla JavaScript where I can.

I’ve avoided those tools because I find them to be too much – too much code, too much bloat, too much technical debt – for the type of projects I work on.

What concerns me most about these kinds of tools is the way they distract developers from the basics. Learning HTML and CSS from the ground up seems to have gone by the way-side. And that lack of understanding is what causes so many issues when it comes to web accessibility.

I often say that the best way to build an accessible web site is to start with semantic HTML. Screen reader technology understands it right out of the box. And it comes with built-in functionality that we don’t have to recreate with fancy scripts that add weight to a page.

HTML is the foundation for all websites. It’s what browsers use to deliver a website to us. Without HTML, there wouldn’t be much of a web to browse. So can we all try to learn a little HTML today?