Mobility and Accessibility are not new technologies that have come up. They are not extras that some of us need to tack on to what web developers do.
They are an essential part of web development and should be considered as basic skills.
Accessibility is not hard. It used to be, it really used to be, but with HTML5, it’s actually quite simple. Simply a small part of the HTML5 spec, something web developers should know. Mobility was a hot new topic 6+ years ago. Now it’s expected that the applications you build are in some way available on a mobile platform.
It is an expectation.
Why is this not the reality? Why are web developers still making applications the same way they were 10 years ago? It partly has to do with web development being a “full stack” profession for so long. Traditionally, the front end has been small and the back end has been “the application”. The direction of the web is putting more of the application on the front end, so developers that are considered full stack have to now know more than basic HTML and the minimal JavaScript it takes to do some validation. JavaScript has become huge, for large applications, it requires its own framework.
I don’t think that’s been adequately realized by the web development community yet. The future of the web is a partnership, where the applications are separate. the back end an API, the front end the “actual application” that gets the data it needs from the API. As such, people are turning more to micro frameworks for the back end, and away from what had become the staple Rails clones — and much further away from the even larger, more complex frameworks.
I’m not sure if Single Page Applications are truly “the” future. But they are the now. It is important to stay on top of this, as this industry is constantly changing. But one thing is for sure, if you’re a business fully invested in back end developers, you’re hitting a problem where you feel like you need to hire “UI specialists” when you really need either 1) for back end developers to beef up their front end development skills or 2) to hire developers focused on front end “development” (as opposed to graphic designers).