Improve Accessibility and Add Automated A11y Testing for Contributor Components

[TheAshutoshMishra]

What feature do you want to see added?

This issue tracks the refactoring of ContributorCard, FeaturedContributor, and SearchResults to align with project conventions by using MUI components. The primary goal is to resolve WCAG violations (specifically nested interactive elements) and add missing ARIA labels/alt text to ensure accessibility compliance within the established Material UI framework. This work is linked to PR #521.

Upstream changes

To solve this issue, I will refactor the ContributorCard, FeaturedContributor, and SearchResults components to use the project’s standard MUI components, ensuring consistent styling and a cleaner codebase. I will fix the accessibility violations by restructuring the DOM to eliminate nested interactive elements, allowing keyboard users and screen readers to navigate profile links and social icons independently. Finally, I will remove the external testing infrastructure to keep the repository lightweight while maintaining a 100% manual accessibility score.

[krisstern]

I am not really sure if we need what has implemented in #521

[TheAshutoshMishra]

I am not really sure if we need what has implemented in #521

Hi Kris, I completely understand your concern regarding the implementation in #521. My goal is to support the project’s long-term health, so I plan to strip out the extra testing infrastructure to focus strictly on the MUI refactor and critical accessibility (WCAG) fixes. Could you provide some direction on the best path forward for maintenance: would you prefer I continue with a minimalist MUI refactor within the current Gatsby stack to resolve these a11y bugs, or should I pause this PR to focus entirely on the Vite/JSON prototype as a cleaner start? I value your guidance on which approach would be most helpful for the community.