In the beginning…
… there was an introduction 😂. Welcome folks to A to Z Accessibility: The Creators Kit. This post is all about the letter C and the EPIC Power Apps Creator Kit from the PowerCAT team!
As we are talking about Power Apps controls you will not be surprised to hear that this article applies to Power Apps.
Let there be Creators!
When the first preview of the Creator Kit was released, I admit that I took a cursory glance, a quick play, and thought nothing more of it. Mainly because the initial focus on social media was around bringing a consistent Fluent UI framework to Canvas Power Apps. All very nice, but I was focussed on accessibility.
Well, more fool me. A lesson to me not to skim read and not go looking for myself. The awesome folks who write blog posts etc mainly focus more on functionality, design, usability etc. There are not many folks who would look at this from an Accessibility perspective… and that should have been me.
Fast forward to the big release announcement, and out came the amazing news that it has been built with Accessibility in mind from the ground up! I was floored. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, in a good way of course. This is amazing, but it doesn’t tell you what the kit actually is does it?!? Well take a look at the PowerCAT Live video below to get a good feel for this epic toolkit.
Accessibility is not a feature – it’s a core element
The great thing with this video is that accessibility is a completely natural part of the conversation. It’s a standard part of the build and there from the outset.
In terms of what else the kit delivers the biggie is Fluent UI. Anyone who has built Power Apps within Teams will be familiar with the differences in the way controls look and feel. This is deliberate as it’s designed to fit in with Teams itself, and with the Fluent UI design language. Office, Windows, and even Dynamics 365 first party apps now have this as the core design language.
Power Apps itself doesn’t have that look and feel as standard. The controls are a different style and work in a different manner. That’s not a criticism, it’s just what it is and it’s what we’ve all played with for years.
The components, sample apps, and tools in the Creator kit bring that Fluent UI experience to canvas apps. Everything from toolbars to buttons, calendars to lists, navigation bars to dialogs, and a whole lot more. It can all be themed and has a theme designer app, although it’s a single theme for the app at the moment (Hello… sounds like an opportunity for a certain theming engine!) and all the controls have accessible properties and actions.
Create all the things, and make them accessible
What I really love about this project is that it’s all on GitHub. People can take the code, tweak it, compile it, and keep adding to the project. I’m sure it won’t be long before more controls get added to the kit – although there are more than enough to build most apps as it stands right now!
Building accessible apps is easier than ever now, thanks to the work of the team behind this kit. You can now create nice looking, performant, and accessible apps without even breaking a sweat.
You can read about the kit at Introducing the Creator Kit – Efficiently create performant Fluent UI based Power Apps | Microsoft Power Apps and you can find it over at the Creator Kit GitHub page by clicking here.
A final word about A to Z Accessibility: The Creators Kit
Hopefully this intro to the Creator Kit has been useful. I also hope you head off now to download and play and build all the awesome! This post is part of my series “A to Z of Accessibility – Power Platform edition”. Click here to go to the introduction article where I will be posting a Table of Contents, or simply check out the Accessibility section of the website from the top menu or by going directly to the category page here.
Content in this series is © Mike Hartley. I am happy for folks to quote or reuse snippets (with attribution) but this has taken a lot of work to compile so please do not copy whole sections. If there are any corrections or suggestions, then please use my social links to contact me. I am always happy to add additional content and remarks with full credit given. Likewise, these pages will evolve as my learning and understanding grows, so make sure to keep this bookmarked