Accessibility in React Calendar component

24 Jan 202412 minutes to read

The Calendar component followed the accessibility guidelines and standards, including ADA, Section 508, WCAG 2.2 standards, and WCAG roles that are commonly used to evaluate accessibility.

The accessibility compliance for the Calendar component is outlined below.

Accessibility Criteria Compatibility
WCAG 2.2 Support Intermediate
Section 508 Support Intermediate
Screen Reader Support Yes
Right-To-Left Support Yes
Color Contrast Yes
Mobile Device Support Yes
Keyboard Navigation Support Yes
Accessibility Checker Validation Yes
Axe-core Accessibility Validation Yes
Yes - All features of the component meet the requirement.
Intermediate - Some features of the component do not meet the requirement.
No - The component does not meet the requirement.

WAI-ARIA attributes

The Web accessibility defines a way to make web content and web applications more accessible to disabled people. It especially helps the dynamic content change and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies.

Calendar provides built-in compliance with the WAI-ARIA specifications. WAI-ARIA supports is achieved through the attributes like aria-label,aria-selected, aria-disabled, aria-activedescendant applied for navigation buttons, disable and active day cells.

It helps to provides information about the widget for assistive technology to the disabled person in the screen reader. Calendar component contains grid as role and grid cell for each day cell

  • Aria-label : attribute provides the text label for an object for the previous and next month element. It helps the screen reader object to read for the assistive purpose.

  • Aria-selected : attribute indicates the currently selected date of the Calendar component.

  • Aria-disabled : attribute indicates the disabled state of this Calendar component.

  • Aria-activedescendent : attribute helps in managing the current active child of the Calendar component.

  • Role : attributes gives assistive technologies information about how to handle each element in a widget.

  • Grid-cell : attributes define the individual cell that can be focusable and selectable.

Keyboard Interaction

You can use the following keys to interact with the Calendar. The component implements the keyboard navigation support by following the WAI-ARIA practices

It supports the below list of shortcut keys.

Press To do this
Upper Arrow Focus the previous week date.
Down Arrow Focus the next week date.
Left Arrow Focus the previous date.
Right Arrow Focus the next date.
Home Focus the first date in the month.
End Focus the last date in the month.
Page Up Focus the same date in the previous month.
Page Down Focus the same date in the next month.
Enter Select the currently focused date.
Shift + Page Up Focus the same date in the previous year.
Shift + Page Down Focus the same date in the next year.
Control + Upper Arrow Moves into the inner level of view like month-year, year-decade
Control + Down Arrow Moves out from the depth level view like decade-year, year-month
Control + Home Focus the starting date in the current year.
Control + End Focus the ending date in the current year.

To focus the Calendar component use the alt+t keys.

[Class-component]

import { CalendarComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-calendars';
import * as React from "react";
import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";
export default class App extends React.Component {
    calendarInstance;
    componentDidMount() {
        const proxy = this;
        document.onkeyup = (e) => {
            if (e.altKey && e.keyCode === 84 /* t */) {
                // press altt to focus the control.
                proxy.calendarInstance.element.querySelector('table').focus();
            }
        };
    }
    render() {
        return (
        // specifies the tag for render the Calendar component
        <CalendarComponent id="calendar" ref={(scope) => { this.calendarInstance = scope; }}/>);
    }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('element'));
import { Calendar, CalendarComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-calendars';
import * as React from "react";
import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {

    private calendarInstance: Calendar;

    public componentDidMount() {
        const proxy = this;
        document.onkeyup = (e: KeyboardEvent) => {
            if (e.altKey && e.keyCode === 84 /* t */) {
                // press altt to focus the control.
                (proxy.calendarInstance.element.querySelector('table') as HTMLElement).focus();
            }
        };
    }

    public render() {
        return (
            // specifies the tag for render the Calendar component
            <CalendarComponent id="calendar" ref={(scope) => { (this.calendarInstance as Calendar | null) = scope; }}  />
        );
    }

 }

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('element'));

[Functional-component]

import { CalendarComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-calendars';
import * as React from "react";
import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";
function App() {
    let calendarInstance;
    React.useEffect(() => {
        const proxy = this;
        document.onkeyup = (e) => {
            if (e.altKey && e.keyCode === 84 /* t */) {
                // press altt to focus the control.
                proxy.calendarInstance.element.querySelector('table').focus();
            }
        };
    }, []);
    return (
    // specifies the tag for render the Calendar component
    <CalendarComponent id="calendar" ref={(scope) => { calendarInstance = scope; }}/>);
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('element'));
import { Calendar, CalendarComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-calendars';
import * as React from "react";
import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";

function App() {
    let calendarInstance: Calendar;
    React.useEffect(() => {
    const proxy = this;
    document.onkeyup = (e) => {
      if (e.altKey && e.keyCode === 84 /* t */) {
        // press altt to focus the control.
        proxy.calendarInstance.element.querySelector('table').focus();
      }
    };
    }, []);

    return (
        // specifies the tag for render the Calendar component
        <CalendarComponent id="calendar" ref={(scope) => { (calendarInstance as Calendar | null) = scope; }}  />
    );
}

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('element'));

Ensuring accessibility

The Calendar component’s accessibility levels are ensured through an accessibility-checker and axe-core software tools during automated testing.

The accessibility compliance of the Calendar component is shown in the following sample. Open the sample in a new window to evaluate the accessibility of the Calendar component with accessibility tools.

See also