Demographics tells us that we need help. Automating the physical world requires robots. We need them to be accessible!
Category: Future of A11y
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2025 is the year of European Accessibility Act. But we can establish that it will help with global accessibility, not only European.
Is it just me or is it weird to require and encourage the use of standard and at the same time hide them behind paywalls and even make them inaccessible?
We need to be aware of the limitation of the tools to be able to use them properly and to prevent any bias.
Dear leader, this is a letter to you. If you lead people, you need to lead accessibility.Do not just delegate it. You will thank me later.
AI is a fact. Some say it will improve accessibility, and I hope it will, but please consider the facts and new regulation.
Short reflection on positive and negative situations related to accessibility standards. Unification, or to say standardization of accessibility standards, should be our common goal.
W3C Accessibility Guidelines just got a major update. Still a draft, but I love the brainstorming potentials of the newly added guidelines and outcomes. Was the release date an coincidence?
Sometimes it can be hard to embrace accessibility when we only consider the business perspective. And some people need harsh motivation, when good for people and good for business arguments are not enough.
Digital transformation without accessibility can’t really be called digitalization as it will produce the need to provide alternative formats manually, not to even mention all the problems with bias when relying solely on artificial intelligence.
If Jakob’s intention was attention, then he got it. Please don’t internalize that accessibility is failed when it didn’t had a chance to even start.
Personal reflection about my encounter with web and accessibility, how I was ignorant of it as well and how I think we can’t be ignorant any more.
Automatic testing, although limited, is useful for quick and bulk test of webpages. With current progress I would expect it to be more efficient, but such tests could easily be bypassed and we can get bad data.
We live in times where technology progress is amazing and therefore we need to make sure we don’t leave groups of people behind. Robots will obviously soon help us at home and everywhere and it is crucial we make their interfaces accessible. Or we will make our society full of new barriers for people with disabilities.
I try to open my mind and reflect on some possibilities that would maybe, perhaps, make accessibility overlays viable solutions. Then I quickly find the downsides and don’t change my mind about them…
Sometimes when I audit webpages and mobile apps I really wish that parts of WCAG AAA would just become AA, to improve the user experience and to make things better for more users.
Making large scale analysis of accessibility based on centralized accessibility statements is simple. But we do need to consider that not everybody filling out accessibility statements have the needed experience and knowledge. And sometimes the intention to be transparent is also absent.
WCAG 2.2 is here, when do we get it into legislation, like Web Accessibility Directive and European Accessibility Act? Well EN 301 549 seems to be updating in 2025, according to work item schedule it may come in early 2026. Unless ETSI adds WCAG 2.2 sooner it seems that we will have to wait quite a long time.
Brief reflection on 3 years of WAD in EU and short version of attending WAD anniversary event which was really worth attending.
Sustainability and accessibility are absolutely interconnected. Recent sustainability guidelines, although still in draft version, are quite often referring to accessibility, so I wanted to expose parts where accessibility is beneficial to sustainability.
Digital transformation – as we move from paper to spreadsheets and then to smart applications for all parts of our business needs, we have the obligation to make our future digital business accessible from the start.
Keyboard only users (or users of keyboard based assistive technologies) depend on seeing focus indications at all times and if they can’t see them, they are left to guessing where they are. With soon-to-come WCAG 2.2 focus must be at least partially visible at all times, simply put.
Shifting left, that is considering accessibility earliest possible, should be a concept in our school system as well. Basics of accessibility thought earlier in our lives is probably the only sustainable way to make our societies more inclusive and our products and services more accessible.
I wanted to check for myself it ChatGPT can help delivering more accessible code. And after multiple trials I gave up. The reason for it’s confident but wrong example code is clear to me and when you read this post it will also be clear to you.
I received a brief question about Web Accessibility in Norway and if it is different from the EU and decided to write a short post as an answer.
A post from fellow accessibility specialist made me think about why people think accessibility is difficult. I think that awareness, knowledge, ethics, involvement and responsibility can help a lot.
I’ve learned that WCAG can’t be changed a lot and that only additions are allowed. Now I’ve read that WCAG 2.2 will have the 4.1.1 success criterion (parsing) removed. My first reaction was – why and how will we work with problems in HTML then? On the other hand we should probably be happy we can focus on other problems that are more related directly to accessibility.
What would I have in an automatic accessibility testing tool if I could have anything that is possible with today’s technology?
Well, I would start at the beginning – clear scope and known priorities is a start and sometimes we can’t really cover all that when we have to choose where we need to focus. Next, I would like to teach the tool, so that it will be more and more independent. And because I like to stand for my decisions – I would like to use the blockchain to prove my efforts and fixes. Words can be empty, deeds talk.
Short introduction post on important subject of cognitive accessibility – especially the practical guidelines that can be found in latest study.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is hot and getting more (deserved) attention. Please do not forget about accessibility when trying to implement DEI. It’s at least as important as all other aspects that can make our world a better, more inclusive, place. Start with basics, we do not need to become experts at once. It needs to be a part of our deliveries otherwise we discriminate.