9 parts · 18 chapters

Accessibility and the Frontend Disciplines

A discipline is a practice that applies to every feature regardless of what the feature is: the thing you do on every screen, every PR, every release, because the cost of not doing it is paid by users who cannot see, by users on slow phones, by users whose data leaks, by users in another language, and by the company when the regulator asks. None of them is a feature; all of them are gates, and the mark of a mature frontend is that the gates are mechanical rather than remembered.

Six parts. Accessibility first and deepest: the standards and their structure, ARIA and the accessibility tree the browser builds, focus and keyboard models, how screen readers actually read a page, colour and contrast, motion, forms, live regions, and testing and audits that find what the linter cannot. Then performance as a discipline with budgets and gates, client observability, client security, internationalisation, and privacy: each what it is, how it fails, and the gate that stops the failure shipping.

Start reading · Part 0 Present as slides
accessibility in depth · performance · observability · security · i18n · privacysenior → staff · every frontend engineer; required reading for anyone reviewing PRs
WCAG and POURThe standard's structure, the four principles, conformance levels, and what the law requires where.
ARIA and the treeRoles, states and properties; the accessibility tree the browser derives; when ARIA helps and when it harms.
focus and keyboardFocus management, roving tabindex, composite widget models, skip links, and what every interaction must support.
screen readersHow VoiceOver, NVDA and TalkBack read a page; names, descriptions, landmarks, live regions.
colour, motion, formsContrast ratios and non-colour meaning, reduced motion, form labelling and error association.
performance, observabilityBudgets and Vitals in CI, real devices, regression gates; RUM, errors, replay, tracing.
security, i18n, privacyXSS surface, CSP, dependency risk, secrets; locales and Intl; consent, minimisation, regulation.
testing and auditsAutomated checks, manual passes, audits, and the gate for each discipline.
00

Accessibility in Depth: The Tree and the Standard

The accessibility tree · WCAG: structure, principles, levels, law
2 ch · ~20 min01

Accessibility in Depth: Focus, Keyboard, Screen Readers

Focus and keyboard models · How a screen reader reads a page
2 ch · ~20 min02

Accessibility in Depth: Colour, Motion, Forms, Live Regions

Colour, contrast and motion · Forms and live regions
2 ch · ~20 min03

Accessibility in Depth: Testing, Audits and the Gate

What each testing method finds · Accessibility as a gate
2 ch · ~15 min04

Performance Discipline

Performance as a discipline · When a number moves: the method
2 ch · ~15 min05

Client Observability

The client observability pipeline · Errors, replay, crash-free and the trace
2 ch · ~15 min06

Client Security

XSS and the four layers · Dependencies, third parties and secrets
2 ch · ~15 min07

Internationalisation

Locale, Intl and plurals · RTL and the translation pipeline
2 ch · ~15 min08

Privacy

Consent as a state machine · Minimisation, rights and the regimes
2 ch · ~15 min
Paired with the Design and Trust coursesThe Design course made accessibility the only compiling use of a component; the Trust course made degraded states designed. This course is the disciplines beneath both: the standards, the mechanisms, and the gates that keep every feature honest.