basic-list-box — keyboard-navigable list box, now with ARIA support for better accessibility
December 10, 2014
This review focuses not on a component, but an aspect of a component called basic-list-box. Component Kitchen released that component under the aegis of the Basic Web Components project. In our reviews, we want to avoid focusing too much on our own work, but in this case we can happily feature a small but important contribution to the project from developer Marcy Sutton, a passionate advocate for building an accessible web that can be used by everyone.
An important goal for Basic Web Components is to make all its components as accessible as possible, for several reasons. You can use these components, used as is, and reach the broadest possible range of users. You can extend these components or incorporate them into your own components, and automatically pick up a degree of support for accessibility. And you can refer to these components as good examples of how to implement accessibility if you’re creating a new component entirely from scratch. This work is just beginning, and by no means perfect, but those are the goals. The good news is that improvements are made to the components, anyone using those components can easily pick up those improvements for free.
As a case in point, Marcy recently contributed an enhancement to basic-list-box (and a lower-level base class called basic-selector) that improves a list’s accessibility through the use of appropriate ARIA features on the list itself and the individual items in the list. The best part about an improvement like this in a fundamental building block like basic-selector or basic-list-box means that you can achieve better accessibility simply by using those components. Even if you know nothing about ARIA and accessibility technologies, using these components makes your app likely to be more accessible than one constructed from a undifferentiated pile of divs.
Noteworthy: Support for keyboard navigation, including Up/Down, Page Up/Down, Home/End. Appropriate use of ARIA roles and other attributes means that users who are blind or visually impaired can more easily identify and navigate a list of items.