Overview
- Two DEV Community how-to guides present practical steps for building accessible apps in React and Next.js, framing accessibility as a legal requirement and a product quality win.
- The authors stress semantic HTML over custom divs because native elements provide keyboard support, screen reader cues, and focus handling by default.
- They explain that ARIA adds meaning but not behavior, so custom widgets need real keyboard controls and careful focus management, with examples for dialogs and dropdowns.
- Visual and form guidance includes WCAG AA contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text), explicit labels with aria-describedby or aria-invalid, and clear alt text or decorative hiding for images.
- The guides show how to add automated checks with axe-core in development, jest-axe in tests, Lighthouse or the axe extension in the browser, and Playwright in CI, and they steer teams to Radix via shadcn/ui or a $99 AI SaaS Starter that bakes these defaults in.