Making Calendars With Accessibility and Internationalization in Mind

This article details creating an accessible and internationalized calendar component using vanilla JavaScript and CSS. It avoids external libraries, focusing on semantic HTML, screen-reader compatibility, and leveraging modern JavaScript APIs for date/time handling and localization.

The tutorial emphasizes best practices for building calendar components, highlighting the often-overlooked aspects of time zones, date formats, and localization. It addresses the common developer hesitation towards the native Date() object, showcasing how modern JavaScript APIs simplify date manipulation and formatting.

The core of the tutorial revolves around a custom element, kal-El, designed to render a single month's calendar. Internationalization is achieved using the Intl.Locale, Intl.DateTimeFormat, and Intl.NumberFormat APIs, dynamically adapting to the user's locale based on the lang attribute of the root element. Fallback to en-US is implemented for situations where locale information is unavailable. Semantic HTML, including <time></time> tags for screen reader compatibility, is employed throughout.

The kal-El function uses a configuration object merging user-provided settings with defaults, determining the displayed month and year. It leverages the Intl.Locale API's weekInfo object to obtain locale-specific information about the first day of the week and weekend days, simplifying internationalization.

The rendering process utilizes template literals for efficient markup generation. Weekday names are handled using Intl.DateTimeFormat, offering both long and short versions for responsive design. Date numbers are rendered with <time></time> tags including datetime attributes for accessibility. Additional data attributes (data-weekend, data-today, data-weeknumber) are included for styling purposes.

CSS Grid is used for layout, with CSS variables providing customization options. Styling is applied to highlight the current date and differentiate weekend days. The :is() pseudo-class enhances CSS efficiency. The tutorial also demonstrates how to dynamically adjust grid column placement based on the first day of the week.

Finally, the tutorial extends the functionality to render an entire year's calendar using a jor-El wrapper element, creating a grid of monthly calendars. A bonus section showcases a visually appealing "confetti calendar" style achieved solely through CSS modifications. The entire project uses only vanilla JavaScript and CSS, emphasizing a clean and efficient approach to building a robust calendar component.

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