reviewing-accessibility-and-i18n

name	reviewing-accessibility-and-i18n
description	Reviews UI changes for accessibility and internationalization: semantic HTML vs div-with-onclick, keyboard operability and focus management, accessible names on icon buttons and inputs, contrast, ARIA misuse, hardcoded user-facing strings, naive pluralization, non-locale-aware number/date/currency formatting, and RTL-unsafe layout. Use when reviewing components, templates, markup, forms, modals, UI text, or anything user-facing. Skip when the change has no user-facing surface — backend, CLI, library, or infra code with no rendered UI or localized strings.
provenance	{"taxonomy_version":"v0.9","built_from":[{"category":23,"source":"docs/research/cluster-6-evolution.md#23","hash":"a02904ad82b6ea769857880ee0150fd9d19c068d1c8aa3be15ae113b891ad420"}]}

reviewing-accessibility-and-i18n

Can everyone use this UI? Keyboard, screen readers, contrast, locales, RTL.

When to use

Reviews UI changes for accessibility and internationalization: semantic HTML vs div-with-onclick, keyboard operability and focus management, accessible names on icon buttons and inputs, contrast, ARIA misuse, hardcoded user-facing strings, naive pluralization, non-locale-aware number/date/currency formatting, and RTL-unsafe layout. Use when reviewing components, templates, markup, forms, modals, UI text, or anything user-facing. Skip when the change has no user-facing surface — backend, CLI, library, or infra code with no rendered UI or localized strings.

Shape: diff. Written for concrete code; not meant for design docs or plans.

Reviewer discipline

Report only real problems. If the code correctly handles the case, reply "No findings" and stop — do not invent issues. This guards against false positives on correct code; still report every genuine issue you do find, with its full detail.

Defects are the default; improvements are opt-in. By default this lens is defect-only: do not suggest changes to code that is already correct. When the team has opted up into improvement suggestions, a finding on already-correct code is admissible only as nit-severity, route: implementer (the author applies, defers, or ignores), and must clear the non-configurable anti-churn floor: it must genuinely improve — never offer a merely equivalent alternative — and must converge (once a dimension is as good as you can confidently make it, stop; never oscillate A→B then B→A, never re-order to an equivalent state). Defects keep the strict bar above regardless of this setting.

Team preferences. If the reviewed repo has .code-quality-atlas/preferences.md, apply it before reporting: a repo's .code-quality-atlas/preferences.md may set/tune this lens's thresholds or selection, and — being preference-tier — may suppress one of its findings outright (it never surfaces). Its improvement-valence directive is also what decides whether the "opted up" improvement-suggestion behavior above is active for this review. Absent the file, apply this lens's defaults exactly as written above.

Pre-existing defects in touched code are surfaceable, not yours to fix. When you notice a genuine defect this change did not introduce but that sits in the code this PR actually touches — the edited function or immediately adjacent lines — you may surface it, tagged "pre-existing — not introduced by this change." Like improvements it is opt-in and default-quiet (off unless the team opts up), route: implementer, and non-blocking: it informs the author's fix-now / file-a-ticket / ignore call and never sets this PR's verdict, because the diff did not cause it. Stay scoped to code the change touches — a repo-wide hunt is the audits' job, not this review — and never let it expand the PR's scope.

Top checks

The head of the full checklist — enough for a first pass without opening any reference file:

• Semantic-first: is a real <button>/<a>/<nav>/<main>/heading used, or a <div> with a click handler? Native element = keyboard + role + focus for free.
• Keyboard operable: can every interactive element be reached and activated by Tab/Shift-Tab/Enter/Space/Escape/arrows as appropriate? No mouse-only handlers (click without key handler).
• Focus management: after opening a modal/menu/route change, does focus move sensibly and return on close? Is focus trapped in the dialog? Is :focus-visible styling present (not outline:none with no replacement)?
• Name/role/value: do icon-only buttons, inputs, and custom widgets have accessible names (label, aria-label, aria-labelledby)? No empty buttons/links.
• Contrast: does new text/UI meet 4.5:1 (or 3:1 large / non-text)? Check both themes if dark mode exists.
• Images & media: meaningful images have descriptive alt; decorative images have empty alt=""; videos have captions/transcript where required.
• ARIA discipline: is ARIA only used where native HTML can't express it, with all required states (e.g. aria-expanded, aria-selected) wired and updated? No redundant/conflicting roles.
• No hardcoded user-facing strings: is every new UI string going through the i18n catalog (no literal JSX/template text)? Includes aria-labels, placeholders, error messages, pluralized/templated text.

Mechanizing these checks

Where a finding here is one a tool can catch deterministically, surface that as an advisory route: implementer note next to the finding: the hand review caught it this time, and wiring the matching tool from reference/tool-rules.md into CI gates it going forward. This is a suggestion to mechanize, not a defect — it never blocks a verdict, and it falls away on a repo that already runs the tool.

Process notes. If this lens misfired on this change — flagged correct code, missed an obvious issue squarely in its own scope, or its checklist didn't fit the change shape — say so in one line under synthesizing-review-findings's Process notes appendix; that is not a defect finding. Say nothing if the lens worked as intended — never invent a process note to fill the section.

Going deeper

• reference/heuristics.md — the full checklist; open it when the change sits squarely in this lens's domain.
• examples.md — concrete good/bad findings, and the output format to match.
• reference/tool-rules.md — static-analysis rules covering the mechanical subset; for wiring up linters, not needed for the judgment review itself.
• reference/sources.md — the research behind each check; for provenance, not needed during a review.