Tomorrow's the last day to join this cohort of the AAArdvark Circle. If accessibility has been a big, vague, intimidating thing on your list, this is the most direct way I know to make it feel manageable. $549/yr locked for life, kicks off Aug 7. https://bit.ly/4aAAoVn
"I have a master's in software development, and accessibility was never in the curriculum." A developer told me that last week. When accessibility gets missed, it's almost never that people don't care. It's that no one ever taught them. That's a far more hopeful problem to solve. #a11y
Accessibility work can be lonely - often you're the only one who cares, and when you hit a wall there's no one to ask. That's why I run the AAArdvark Circle: a small group, monthly masterminds + Q&A. New cohort starts Aug 7, doors close July 31. https://bit.ly/4aAAoVn
Scanners made finding automated issues easy. That's the only easy part. The issues you only catch by hand, and fixing any of it, are still hard. Today at 1pm Pacific I'm giving an AI agent a broken site + our AAArdvark context to see how much it can fix, live. https://youtu.be/dj2mbNkEACY
Tomorrow I'm hosting our Circle session on using AI in accessibility work. Not "AI is amazing." Not "AI is dangerous." The useful version: where exactly does it stop helping and start needing you? Today's the day to join if you want to be there live. https://a20y.com/circle
A carousel that only advances by swiping leaves out everyone who can't swipe: head pointers, eye tracking, tremors, one finger. That's WCAG 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures. The fix: add previous and next buttons. Keep the swipe, just don't make it the only way in. #a11y
We spent close to seven months rebuilding Visual Mode, the part of AAArdvark people rely on most. It already worked - that was the problem. "Works" isn't "works reliably," and reliable is a feature. Rebuilt from the ground up: loads cleanly, easier logins. Give it another look. #a11y
AI is a brilliant assistant and a terrible author. It'll draft alt text, captions, a fix. None is finished. It reasons about the accessibility tree but has never used the page. Where AI stops and you take over is our July 10 Circle session. Join by then to be there live. https://bit.ly/4aAAoVn
My team audited a community college site that had an accessibility overlay installed the whole time. We still found a long list of issues it never touched. Today I'm testing one live, by keyboard and screen reader, and digging into the 2026 lawsuit data. Come watch: https://bit.ly/4g5Ty8q #a11y
Build anything, anything, and people come out of the woodwork wanting to buy it. I get "want to sell AAArdvark?" emails almost daily. The answer's no. But the knocking isn't really about your thing being special. It's proof you finished something real. Keep building.
The accessibility alphabet soup (ADA, Section 508, EAA, VPAT, Trusted Tester) scares people off before they start. The secret: almost all of it traces back to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), the technical standard. Learn that, then just know which law applies to whom.
"Move fast and break things" is ableism wearing a startup t-shirt. The stuff that breaks first is what disabled people depend on: focus order, labels, contrast, alt text. None of it shows up in a launch demo. Move fast if you want. Just decide on purpose what you won't break.
I've tested so many tab components that look perfect and break the moment you press an arrow key. Today I'm building accessible tabs from scratch, live, testing with a screen reader at every step, using the ARIA tabs pattern. Come build with me: https://bit.ly/3QH8AqL #a11y
Building Accessible Tabs From Scratch
Tabs look simple. A row of labels, a panel of content, click to switch. So why do so many tab components trap keyboard users, confuse screen readers, or do n...
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Most accessibility issues aren't bugs. They're design decisions. IBM found ~67% start in design, not code - the contrast, the unlabeled form, the "learn more" links. By code review you're catching most issues at the priciest moment to fix it. Move the conversation earlier. #a11y
For years I thought I was good at accessibility. Keyboard nav, contrast, passing scans. Then I listened to a screen reader read one of my own sites and it was a mess. You don't know what you don't know. Finding that out isn't failure - it's the job. #a11y
Marketers just discovered alt text. They think it'll get them picked up by ChatGPT. Maybe it will, maybe it won't - nobody's proven that. But alt text was always worth writing. For the screen reader user who landed on your post a decade ago. #a11y
Had an idea knocking around my head for ages. Tried Midnight Sprint by Hannah Siegertsz and minutes later it was fully baked, name and branding included. Free right now, V2 coming. If you keep circling an idea but never start, give it a look: https://midnightsprint.sheshipssaas.com
What I've spent months on: plain-English fix instructions for every accessibility failure our scanner can flag. More than 300 written so far. The industry solved finding problems. It never solved fixing them. A finding without a fix is just a guilt trip. We're closing that gap, one at a time. #a11y
I've watched teams get a clean scan and think they were done. The scanner sees about a third of what matters. The rest takes a human. Today 1pm PT I'm going live to make the gap visible: pass the scanners, then test by keyboard and screen reader to find the rest. https://bit.ly/3PC9VPk
The right way to hide content from sighted users but keep it for screen readers isn't display:none (that hides it from everyone) or left:-9999px (old trick, breaks scrolling). Use an .sr-only class with clip-path. Small snippet, big difference. #a11y
You are temporarily abled. Burned fingers. Arm in a sling. Vertigo. Parent holding a baby. Cracked AirPods on a train. Allergies wrecking low-contrast text. None tick "disabled" on a form. All need your site to work. Disability isn't a fringe. It's most of us, eventually. #a11y
Missed the same 12-pixel close button three times last week. Steady hands. Mouse. Sitting still. The button still won. That's WCAG 2.5.8 failing in real time. Tap targets need 24 by 24 CSS pixels in WCAG 2.2 AA. Walked through the most common failures and CSS fixes on LinkedIn today. #a11y
Five things on GAAD (Global Accessibility Awareness Day): 1 Scanners catch a third. 2 Semantic HTML does most of the work. 3 Keyboard support is the wedge. 4 ARIA is the last resort, not the safety net. 5 And the hardest part isn't the code. It's making the case to the people writing it. #a11y
The case I make most often: accessibility isn't a niche concern, you use accessibility features every day without realizing it. Going live at 1pm PT today to walk through the framing. Tomorrow is GAAD (Global Accessibility Awareness Day). https://bit.ly/4tF0f4e
The "separate accessible version" pitch is the web equivalent of the freight elevator in the back. Even when it works, it tells disabled users they're a separate audience, not a default one. Fix the main site, not the workaround. #a11y
For 20 years, my accessibility workflow felt like a data entry job. Scanner, export, spreadsheet, hand-craft a report. The actual work was 30% of the time. Nobody had built a tool that fit. So we did. AAArdvark has a free plan. No demo call. https://a20y.com
Most a11y debates aren't really about accessibility. They're about unnamed priorities. Compliance, user experience, time-to-market - these aren't the same goal. They produce different roadmaps. The fastest way to make better accessibility decisions: be honest about what you're optimizing for.
You used to be able to dismiss a11y warnings in AAArdvark but never confirm them - so every scan felt like starting over. Now: one-click confirm or dismiss, batch across instances. Warnings become errors. The list shrinks as you review it. We built this because we needed it.
The most broken ARIA I've reviewed was almost always written by experienced devs. ARIA fails confidently - the UI works, but the announcement is wrong. The fix isn't more ARIA knowledge. It's testing what you ship. Live demos today 1pm PT: https://bit.ly/3P35AEr
Steve Frenzel's 4 roles every a11y advocate plays: Adviser - in the room when decisions are made Mediator - translating between teams Smuggler - folding a11y into work scoped as something else Hacker - linters and CI rules to make the right thing easy You're probably already playing three. #a11y