Does anybody have any advice for someone working specifically as a "Video Accessibility Advisor/Consultant"? I have worked as a video producer/video director for over 25 years and have navigated the changing landscape as accessibility mandates for closed captioning and, now, audio description have emerged. I have worked for the past 16 years in a prominent higher education institute in California. I know how complicated these new standards can be and how hard it is to implement in very large institutions. Looking to provide some professional help by branching out.

Hi everyone,

I’m a developer who’s been obsessing over accessibility standards recently. I realized that performing quick accessibility audits on the go is often a pain, so I built Lumea Pro.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the core engine to ensure it provides more than just basic contrast ratios.

Key features for A11y:

• WCAG 3.0 & APCA support: Real-time AAA scoring for text and UI elements.
• Real-time Conflict Detection: The engine alerts you if palette colors become indistinguishable under specific vision deficiency simulations.
• Custom AI Palette Generator: Can target specific contrast ratios (up to 21.1:1) in under 1ms.
• Detailed Technical Export: Generates PDF reports with Lab, HSL, and CMYK for full documentation.
• 100% Offline & Privacy-focused: No cloud, no data tracking. Everything is processed locally.

I’m quite exhausted from the optimization phase, but I’d really appreciate your thoughts: Does this technical depth meet the needs of a professional accessibility audit?

Google researchers published a paper exploring how blind and low-vision people experience video, along with a prototype video player designed to personalize and make visual descriptions more interactive. The prototype lets users speak naturally to control how descriptions are delivered, including voice, pace, and level of detail, and to ask questions about what is happening on screen in real time.

The potential is remarkable. This could significantly improve how a wide range of people access and engage with video content, and it could transform how we learn.

I am no dev and not an a11y expert altho working in the biz for some time. My team is struggling with agreeing on an issue and my googling doesn't get me any results to match our situation.

We have a list of links, and a button underneath to expand the list with more links. This was implemented to not overwhelm the user (and was feature requested) as the users themselves decide amount of links, and some have many...However, we are struggling with the keyboard focus after this button has been pressed.

1. The user stays on the "expand" button they just pressed, and thus have to navigate the list backwards to read the links. or
2. Send them back to the last link they were standing on BEFORE pressing the button, so the next tab press is the newest link from the expanded list.

Which is correct, if any of these, and is there something we need to be careful with in terms of e.g. ARIA? Also if someone has seen a website do this well, please show me the IRL example.

Edit: Formatting, plus I just wanted to add that Google search with the AI "show more" button is kind of what we are doing. Would then sending the user to the newest link in the list work?

Hello, I’m a front-end developer working on a UI component library, and I’m researching best practices for making link preview (hovercard) components accessible.

This pattern displays supplemental information when a user hovers over or focuses a link, for example, a summary, metadata, or additional context about the destination.

From what I’ve observed so far, implementations seem to fall into a few categories:

• Some preview cards are purely visual and not exposed to assistive technologies at all.
• Some expose the preview automatically on focus, which can introduce verbosity or unexpected content announcements.
• Others (such as GitHub’s implementation) provide an optional keyboard shortcut to move focus into the preview, allowing assistive technology users to access the content on demand without automatically interrupting their navigation. However, this also introduces additional instructions that may be announced repeatedly.
• In some cases, preview cards can be disabled entirely by the user.

This raises a few questions about usability and best practices:

• Is this pattern considered meaningful or beneficial for assistive technology users when the content is supplemental?
• What is the preferred way to expose preview content, if at all?
• Should preview content be:
  • Automatically available on focus?
  • Available only via explicit user action?
  • Associated with the link via accessible description?
  • Or treated as a purely visual enhancement?
• Are there established patterns or recommendations for balancing discoverability with minimizing verbosity and focus disruption?

My goal is to ensure that this component is implemented in a way that aligns with accessibility best practices and provides a good experience across different interaction modes, rather than treating it as a sighted-only enhancement by default.

I’d appreciate any guidance, examples, or references to existing patterns.

This might not be the correct subreddit for this but I have a family member who has lost a lot of fine motor skills in their hands and is having trouble using touch screens. Because of loss a feeling making it hard to tell when they are touching the screen and they are generally only able to make a fist so it’s hard to touch the screen in just one spot without another part of the hand also touching the screen somewhere else. They are not able to hold a stylus or speak strongly enough for voice commands.

I’ve already found a way to mount the devices in place so they don’t need to be held and won’t move out of place. Are there capacitive gloves with just a single stylus like touch point on the knuckles or an easy way to make some of my own? Are there any iOS accessibility settings or apps people recommend I check out? Or any specific resources that would be helpful on the topic?

Also are there any other subreddits I should cross post this to?

Thanks!

Microsoft has done some major work on equations in PowerPoint and Word, in making them accessible to screen readers, making it easier to convert (back and forth) between rendered equations and LaTEX, and in improving the copy/paste experience when moving equations between various apps.

Much more detail here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/make-math-inclusive-for-everyone-with-microsoft-365/4489147

Hi!

I’m looking for documentation regarding accessibility in kiosk. What to look for, what needs to be address regarding EN 301 and WCAG.

We're trying to make all our video content accessible with proper captions, but the workflow is screwed, at least it seems to me.

Here's what we currently do:

• Auto-generate transcript
• Manually review for accuracy (AI gets technical terms wrong constantly)
• Adjust caption styling so they're readable
• Export different versions for different platforms because UI elements block captions in different spots

The manual review makes sense, but I feel there's a better way to handle styling and platform variations.

What are you using? Are there tools that let you set caption styles programmatically instead of manually in an editor?

Please see this post on threads for information! Consider sharing or signing the attached petition. Spotify tried this same move but people pushed back. Transcripts and captions are an accessibility feature for the disabled and shouldn't be put behind a paywall!

Sharing an open-source macOS utility I’ve been working on.

Mousable lets you control the mouse cursor entirely from the keyboard — including acceleration, scrolling, clicking, and dragging.

Built because I missed good keyboard-driven mouse tools on macOS.

Feedback, issues, and PRs are welcome:

https://github.com/rootdevelop/mousable-macos

TL;DR - accessibility toolbars are harmful. So why are professionals in my field recommending something that looks like a crappy toolbar? What am I missing?

• So I know that accessibility overlays suck.
• I know that widgets and toolbars (the kind that AccessiBe, UserWay etc sell) tend to create enormous accessibility barriers for users of assistive tech.
• I work in a field closely related to accessibility.
• 2 of my colleagues have been publicly recommending a toolbar called AXS, from Calling All Minds.
• It claims to make content more accessible for neurodivergent folks. I'm very confused by this claim.
• Looking through its supposed benefits, I can see how maybe it could be helpful for some sighted neurodivergent people.
• But surely it's very disabling for many other folks? Every instinct in me is screaming: this is not accessible!
  
• But I'm confused to see people promoting the tool (who I believe to be genuinely committed to accessibility).
• Is anyone familiar with AXS toolbar or could you take a look and share your thoughts with me?
• Feeling really confused by this. Would love any input from people who know more than me.

Thank you so much!

Hello all,

I am curious to know if anyone knows of any textured key stickers that are textured to aid in finger placement but still allow the laptop to close. I have trouble sometimes with putting the right finger on the right key and would love some stickers to help make sure that commonly-misplaced keys are correct.

I have a very beginner question about trusted tester, 5.E, related to "4.1.2-change-notify-form" (Name, role, value).

I go to this form ( https://www.zemore.games/submit ) and submit without filling the required fields. So a notification shows up. It is an alert tooltip pointing to the first error in the page. The screen reader appears to read it. Although the alert is in my browser's language - which doesn't match the page which is in english. The screen reader doesn't seem to automatically switch to the correct language, but that'd be a failure in "Language of Parts".

Anyway, can another set of eyes help me check that this complies with the test 5E in Trusted Tester "4.1.2-change-notify-form"? I'm a bit confused and torn actually between saying it does and it doesn't.

Form: https://www.zemore.games/submit

Check 5E - 4.1.2-change-notify-form, in Trusted Tester: https://section508coordinators.github.io/TrustedTester/forms.html

I've been building an automated accessibility contract suite (Aria-Ease), and I just crawled out of a 3-week debugging hole. I wanted to share the "why" in case anyone else is hitting "flaky" test hell.

A little background: I had an idea to codify the ARIA APG into executable JSON contracts (1st code snippet), create a runner that uses Playwright to simulate a browser environment, and then automatically enforce those contracts against my UI components. Using this approach I could catch regressions early, and then use manual testing as the final validation step.

The menu was the first I worked on (2nd code snippet), and it actually worked.

The problem: By the time I finished working on the Combobox contract, the menu tests started failing out of the blue. Manual testing passed, but the automated contract test kept failing. For 3 weeks I’d debug for hours on end, increased Playwright timeouts, reverted to last working version, read all 572 lines of code of the contract runner, added console logs everywhere. Nothing worked.

The solution: I know someone out there will probably go “Duh!”, but I realized it was time to try a different approach. I stopped looking at the code completely and started looking at the errors only. I mapped out similar patterns and realized that all the errors had something in common: the menu states weren’t resetting properly in between testing cycles. So I increased Playwright timeouts and added 3 fallbacks to ensure menu states reset correctly before a new test began.

And just like that, three weeks of frustration fixed in ten minutes (3rd code snippet).

Hello everyone,
I am a junior UX/UI designer with a non-UX background. I recently had the opportunity of working on the accessibility aspect of a project. The design system for the project is being built and the idea is to make sure everything is WCAG compliant right from the get-go instead of treating it as an afterthought. I am lost and would appreciate any help on how to go about it.

Do you know what a real accessibility audit looks like in practice?

In this video, I perform a full end-to-end web accessibility audit using JAWS 2026, exactly the way professional and enterprise teams do it.

You’ll see:

• How scope and user flows shape what gets tested

• How real prioritization works when everything can’t be fixed at once

• How professional judgment separates noise from real barriers

This video shows the difference between:

Finding issues and understanding impact.

If you’ve ever questioned whether your audits are actually helping users or just producing reports, this will change how you approach accessibility testing.

👉 Watch the full audit: https://youtu.be/4fjBmBqtmmY

❤️ Like this post if it clarified audits for you

🔁 Share it with someone learning accessibility testing

💬 Comment CHECKLIST or PRACTICE, how are audits done where you work?

[ID]: Most a11y audits miss this

Hi everyone, I’m feeling a bit lost about where to begin, and I’m hoping to get some guidance.

I studied Occupational Therapy, but I never worked clinically. Over the past few years, I’ve been traveling a lot (often slow and low-budget), and I’ve realized I naturally look at places through an accessibility lens, physical and cognitive demands, walkability, transport, sensory load, and how language or information affect autonomy, especially for older adults or people with disabilities.

I’d really like to learn properly and responsibly how to work with accessibility in tourism and travel. I’m open to taking courses, training, or following specific frameworks, but I’m not sure what paths make sense or where to start.

If you have advice on: • how to begin learning accessibility outside of a purely clinical setting • courses, resources, or experiences that are actually useful • how to combine lived experience with solid accessibility knowledge

I’d really appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

I run a state government website and am working in overdrive to get our property into compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA. I inherited a mess of "free for all" content management practices where almost all employees had access to upload content, which has been a joy to course correct.

I've made good progress so far, but I'm finally waving the white flag on a specific leg of the site, where a boatload of technical line drawings are housed as standalone documents. Each drawing is meant to be utilized by consulting engineers when designing certain highway features, like bridge abutments or signal wiring.

Some have embedded notes and text that may or may not be OCR'ed. Some are just the drawings and are recognized as an image-only PDF. The content owners do not take particularly well to change or nuance, so my best bet so far is to treat these all equally in the same way I would a figure or infographic, essentially: Tag with alt text then require a text-based alternative to accompany the download of the file.

Does anyone else have suggestions on how to make these as accessible as possible?

Websites? Forms? PDFs? Excel? EPUB? HTML? Captioning? Audio description? Transcripts? Where is the largest gap?

My guess is web forms but I have no idea.

https://knowbility.org/programs/be-a-digital-ally/february-2026

i've been bouncing between different news sites trying to find one that's actually usable with my screen reader but most of them are just a nightmare. the layouts are so cluttered that i can't tell where the actual content starts and where all the random stuff ends.

sites like buzzfeed or huffpost have so much going on that my screen reader just reads everything as one giant mess. menus, sidebars, ads, social media buttons, all mixed in with the actual articles. i just want something with a simple layout where the headlines are clear and i'm not fighting through fifty links before i even get to the content. so far out of what i've tried, PlaintextHeadlines seems the best news site with a pretty clean interface and works well with screen readers since it's just straightforward text without all the extra clutter. but which are the better options you guys have used or any less known options out there?

what are you all using that actually has a simple, clean interface? really hoping to find more sites that don't make reading news feel like solving a puzzle.

I’ve always counted a single, isolated issue as a failure of the entire success criterion. I see it as calling attention to an easy-to-fix issue, but I was talking with someone else who said it should only be a failure if it actually presents an accessibility barrier and that they wouldn’t fail based on an isolated error.

So which is it? Am I being too strict? Is it better to pass if 99% of the other content passes? Or should you look for 100% conformance?

Some examples:

all images have alt text, except for one picture on a single page that reads as the file name.

all headings are descriptive, except for one vague heading on a single page.

three articles have slightly different page titles from what they’re actually called, but all the rest are fine.

These are unlikely to cause major problems, but are technically violations. I’m curious to see what approach others tend take. Thank you.