In our tech-focused society, there is this ever present notion that “accessibility will be solved by some technology”. But it won’t. Making things accessible is a fundamentally human challenge that needs human solutions in human contexts. I wrote about automated testing before. Support Eric’s independent work I'm a web accessibility professional who cares deeply about inclusion and an open web for everyone. I work with Axess Lab as an accessibility specialist. Previously, I worked with Knowbility, the World Wide Web Consortium, and Aktion Mensch. In this blog I publish my own thoughts and rese ..read more

In the last couple of weeks, I had some encounters that made me think about the state of ableism. Turns out that despite a lot of slow but meaningful progress, the world overall is still pretty much ableist. This is not news for anyone who is disabled, of course, and it shouldn’t be for anyone who works in the field of accessibility. Support Eric’s independent work I'm a web accessibility professional who cares deeply about inclusion and an open web for everyone. I work with Axess Lab as an accessibility specialist. Previously, I worked with Knowbility, the World Wide Web Consortium, and Aktio ..read more

Accessibility, especially on the web but also elsewhere, is a complicated combination of people with different roles working together. At any point during the creation of a web page, a blog post, its design, sourcing of images, or writing, issues can creep in. As accessibility people, we often look at the end product and say “this is not accessible” (often meaning “this does not meet the minimum standards set out by WCAG”). And yes, it is always difficult to make everything 100% correct. Nobody’s perfect and we have to make sure that perfect is not standing in the way of progress.[^ Hi Meryl ..read more

I place the start of my career in accessibility to some time in 2008. Sure, I had done accessibility stuff before then, but I always saw me as a front-end developer with an interest in accessibility, not an outright person whose main focus was accessibility. I chose this profession because I believe in a web for all, a discrimination-free environment where everyone can be themselves, unburdened from the constraints of the physical world. Of course, I knew that getting there would be a struggle. Too many people don’t care about disabled people until they experience disability themselves. But I ..read more

In a stunning press release, Level Access has revealed that it plans to buy accessibility overlay company UserWay for about $99 Million. For those who are unaware, accessibility overlays are JavaScripts that claim to fix accessibility issues automagically. They claim to use “AI” to analyze the site and then apply accessibility fixes on the fly while the user is using the website. Of course, it is common knowledge that automated tools for finding accessibility issues can only find a limited number of issues (probably about 30–50%). Fixing issues needs additional context and care. I assume ..read more

This was my submission for axe-con 2024, which unfortunately did not make it to the conference. Please tell me if the topic would be interesting for you, and you would like to hear more about the topic! Title: Enough with the baby steps! Let’s make accessibility leaps. Outline: So much of our work is based on nudging people into the right direction. Applying a little pressure that makes a change but is not disruptive. This needs to change. This talk showcases steps that we can take that make instant notable differences for disabled people using websites and apps by using policy changes that a ..read more

This is a repost of a Twitter thread from August 2022. Slightly edited in format and for clarity. Accessibility must work within the constraints of an ableist world to improve things. I hope it can help to make the world a tiny bit less unjust every day. I have seen accessibility people say “this is a hill I’m willing to die on” and then they died on that proverbial hill. Some clients just don’t care, and you have no power to make them care. You can make them aware, you can put procedures in place, you can point at laws. But you can’t change their attitude. And yes, that might mean that the pr ..read more

When writing about HTML, especially in the context of accessibility audits, you always need to be very clear in what you mean. Otherwise, the guidance is challenging to read for your audience. I recommend to always include brackets with the element names. You can differentiate attributes and values by using these words. Always include the word “value” when talking about values. First mention of an element: “<h1> element” First mention of an attribute: “id attribute” First mention of a value: “my-great-id value” Subsequent mention of an element: “<h1>” or “<h1> element” Subse ..read more

The name “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” (WCAG) has always been a source of misunderstanding and contention. “Guidelines” implies that this document only guides you, gives you hints on how to make web content accessible. But that is only half of WCAG. The other half are “Guardrails” that prevent you from producing wholly inaccessible material. Guidelines The guidelines consist mostly of the Principles and Guidelines (oh!) of WCAG. There are four Principles that have in summary 13 Guidelines. Those are the first two numbers of the Success Criterion number (which are, spoilers, the Guardr ..read more

My friend Nicolas Steenhout has published an article about the impossibility of specificity in accessibility recommendations. It is excellent, and I strongly recommend reading it before continuing here. The reason we often cannot be super specific has its roots in three areas: The web is a complex environment. Anything can be done in hundreds of different ways, depending on the underlying technologies, frameworks, and sometimes business constraints. Recommending the one straightforward HTML/CSS/sprinkle of JavaScript/server-side solution might be a specific answer, but not necessarily a good ..read more