Today I spent around 2.5 hours learning accessibility stuff like ARIA, semantic HTML, and other accessible concepts from The Odin Project. I didn’t do much writing of code, but rather more so questions of theory and practical application. Tomorrow I will write more code I guess. Learning different engineering topics related to accessibility today really made me realize how separate the programming and coding aspect is from actual design. There seems to be this inherent disconnect for some reason even though the two are clearly related. Now, in a way accessibility aspects are unique to both design and programming (ARIA vs color), but if you’re an engineer and need to implement an accessibility feature in the form of code, it might be best to have working knowledge of design and how to implement those concepts into your work. The disconnect happens when one side operates in isolation (designing vs engineering). The best outcome requires understanding how the visual design decisions and the code implementation affect the same user experience. You can’t have one without the other. Coming off that, it’s becoming more clear to me how engineering informs design. Obviously I still have hard limitations in my skill set, but I can see the hard boundaries of designing and programming kind of fading, like they are one in the same, just different sides of the same coin. Again, both inform each other and you can’t have one without the other. It also makes me think how many fancy or cool designs I see are widely accessible and if they even need to be accessible. Like, I’m not sure how much of a requirement mass accessibility actually is in small to medium sized software or sites.
Tomorrow I plan to move onward to teh last portion of The Odin Project’s advanced HTML section. Then, I want to practice w/ EVERYTHING I’ve learned so far for a bit to really make sure I’ve got it hammered down. Then, move on to JS.