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Assistive Technologies vs Progressive Enhancement

Developers should learn about assistive technologies to create inclusive and accessible digital products that comply with legal standards like the ADA and WCAG, and to reach a broader audience, including the estimated 1 billion people worldwide with disabilities meets developers should use progressive enhancement when building websites or applications that need to reach a broad audience, including users on older browsers, low-bandwidth connections, or assistive technologies. Here's our take.

🧊Nice Pick

Assistive Technologies

Developers should learn about assistive technologies to create inclusive and accessible digital products that comply with legal standards like the ADA and WCAG, and to reach a broader audience, including the estimated 1 billion people worldwide with disabilities

Assistive Technologies

Nice Pick

Developers should learn about assistive technologies to create inclusive and accessible digital products that comply with legal standards like the ADA and WCAG, and to reach a broader audience, including the estimated 1 billion people worldwide with disabilities

Pros

  • +This knowledge is crucial for roles in web development, UX/UI design, and software engineering, especially when building public-facing applications, educational tools, or government services where accessibility is mandatory
  • +Related to: web-accessibility, wcag-compliance

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Progressive Enhancement

Developers should use Progressive Enhancement when building websites or applications that need to reach a broad audience, including users on older browsers, low-bandwidth connections, or assistive technologies

Pros

  • +It's crucial for ensuring accessibility compliance, improving SEO through semantic HTML, and creating robust applications that degrade gracefully when advanced features fail
  • +Related to: semantic-html, responsive-web-design

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Assistive Technologies is a concept while Progressive Enhancement is a methodology. We picked Assistive Technologies based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

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The Bottom Line
Assistive Technologies wins

Based on overall popularity. Assistive Technologies is more widely used, but Progressive Enhancement excels in its own space.

Disagree with our pick? nice@nicepick.dev