WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Evaluation

[Malvoz]

As a member of the W3C Maps for HTML Community Group I set out to briefly evaluate the state of accessibility in popular web maps tools for the 2020 W3C/OGC Joint Workshop Series on Maps for the Web which included MapBox GL JS, thus the assessments largely apply to MapLibre as well. Some fixes were introduced in mapbox/mapbox-gl-js#9991 which MapLibre inherited. 👍🏼

The evaluation report lives here: https://github.com/Malvoz/web-maps-wcag-evaluation/blob/master/README.md

I'm hopeful that MapLibre will strive to build inclusive components for an accessible experience for its users. I suggest adding an "accessibility" label to issues relating to this topic, to encourage contributors to think about accessibility (and for issue tracking purposes of course).

Accessibility can be hard sometimes, consider adding a section about accessibility in the CONTRIBUTING.md document to advocate for building accessible content, perhaps including useful resources (something a long the lines of what I proposed for Leaflet in Leaflet/Leaflet#7277).

MapLibre is a great initiative!

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[HarelM]

@Malvoz was this issue covered by the other issues you opened?

[Malvoz]

@HarelM Yes mostly.

In relation to the report (although most issues were originally identified for MapBox which MapLibre inherited):

• Filed #355 to address a failure of SC 4.1.2 Name, Role Value (the Name part)
• Filed #356 to address a failure of SC 4.1.2 Name, Role Value (the Role part)
• Filed #357 to address a failure of SC 4.1.2 Name, Role Value (the Value part)
• Filed #358 to address a failure of SC 1.3.1 Info and Relationships
• Filed #359 to address an issue related to SC 1.3.1 Info and Relationships
• Filed #360 to address a failure of SC 1.1.1 Non-Text Content
• Filed #361 to address a failure of SC 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (due to a bug)
• Filed #362 to address an issue with double speak in some screen readers (e.g. the NVDA bug)
• Filed #363 to address a failure of SC 2.5.5 Target Size failure
• Filed #364 to address a failure of SC 1.3.1 Info and Relationships failure

There are certainly other issues, but I think this is a good start to improve the accessibility of MapLibre maps.