Accessibility

I’ve had this draft kicking around for a couple of months and I want to get it out there per my end of the year philosophy.

Why I Do Accessibility Work

I decided to become an accessibility advocate at work a couple of years ago. It was driven by cynicism and guilt, but I hope it has a positive impact.

Cynicism

I heard of the upcoming impact of the Department of Justice’s rule about Title II and WCAG Standards. I wanted to position myself as someone who was ready to seize that initiative. I was a new developer hired during the heady days of 2021’s tech boom and wanted to ensure my position had some degree of value beyond being an individual contributor.

Guilt

I am also an able-bodied, white, straight male in America. I’ve faced very little adversity and I am very privileged. I want to leverage that privilege to do something good.

I have also benefited from audiobooks, curb cuts, and text to speech. I am also constantly frustrated by badly designed websites.

Ways to Help with Accessibility

Here are some ways I have found to help with accessibility (please to steal them!)

  • I helped organize an Accessibility Day at work to get our portfolio of applications up to WCAG 2.1 standards. This is an ongoing effort as the entire organization is facing a April 2026 deadline.

  • I am part of Code-People Committee where I try to get speakers to share their methods and tooling to the broader community related to accessibility.

  • I contributed to the Capybara Accessibility Audit gem. It was a tiny PR.

  • I use best practices whenever I can for accessibility.

Accessibility Resources

General Resources

Tools

WAVE

WAVE is a suite of evaulaution tools which can help identify accessibility and Web Content Accessibillity Guideline errors. The tools below offer testing of individual pages and URLs. For a more systematic approach, see Popetech. The extension works on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

AInspector Sidebar (Firefox Only)

Evaluates the accessibility compliance of web pages based on WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA requirements using OpenA11y Evaluation Library.

ANDI

Javascript bookmarklet that scans page for accessibility issues.

Lighthouse Plugin (Chrome Only)

Automated tool for improving quality of web pages, including accessibility.

Accessibility Inspector

Xcode feature which enables accessibility validation on Macs.