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Gertrude Nyenyeshi

Software Engineer (KE)

Taking Accessibility with You

Accessibility is an important topic that needs more developers considering it as they develop their products in order to grant access to as many users as possible. This talk will explain how best to think of accessibility through the phases of Web Development. The following sections highlight examples of key talking points under each topic:

1. Understanding your User. I will highlight how important it is to understand the different types of users before kicking off a project. This talk will show that users use the web differently in different scenarios, that there are users who are temporarily disabled and those that are fully disabled and so they access content using assistive technologies.

2. Design. This section will focus on the importance of simplicity in design and layout of your website for easier consumption of content. It will also stress on the importance of color contrast, accessible forms, how to better do data visualisation and what font sizes make your website easier to access.

3. Development. In this section, I will take the audience through how to develop the site in an accessible manner. I will talk about how to use semantic mark up, how to make accessible custom elements, how to use ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes and best practices to follow for links, images and tabbing order. This part will have code samples and demos.

4. Testing. It’s always important to measure how accessible your site is. In this section I will take the audience through different ways and tools to use to test out their sites. I will talk about Keyboard Navigation, Google Lighthouse, Color Contrast checker, Screen Readers (Voice Over on Mac, Talk Back on Android, JAWS on Windows), WAVE, WebAIM and other tools that improve testing and ensure your site is well accessible.


Gertrude is a software developer who is passionate about building performant products that are widely accessible. Aside from this she is invested in growing tech communities. She was one of the founders of TechInPink, an initiative that empowered women in technology. She is the Facebook Developer Circle Eldoret Lead, a community of developers and tech enthusiasts in Eldoret powered by Facebook and she started Accessibility Africa, an online community of developers, designers and enthusiasts in Africa passionate about accessibility and building accessible products/websites.