Issue #494
Featured: The WebAIM Million - 2026 update
“For the eighth consecutive year, WebAIM conducted an accessibility evaluation of the home pages for the top 1,000,000 web sites. The evaluation was conducted using the WAVE stand-alone API (with additional tools to collect site technology and category data). The results provide an overview of and insight into the current state of web accessibility for individuals with disabilities as well as trends over time.”
Read more of The WebAIM Million.
Sponsored: Live Wednesday: How to stop ARIA from making your site less accessible
ARIA is supposed to improve accessibility. But the data tells a different story - pages with ARIA average significantly more errors than pages without. The problem isn’t ARIA itself. It’s adding roles without keyboard support, setting aria-expanded without toggling it, or using role=“menu” where a nav element belongs. This Wednesday (April 8, 1pm PT) we’re walking through the common mistakes and the decision tree for when ARIA actually helps. Live testing with real sites and NVDA.
Join the “How to stop ARIA from making your site less accessible” livestream.
News, resources, tools and tutorials
- Why accessibility must shift left in mobile development (blog post - abra.ai)
- Can AI agent skills help developers ship accessible code? (blog post - intopia.digital)
- Your skip link targets may not need tabindex=-1 to work properly (blog post - matuzo.at)
- Designing together (video/talk - youtube.com)
- Testing Methods: Target size (minimum) (blog post - dennisdeacon.com)
- Eight quick things to remember when using aria-owns (blog post – maxdesign.com.au)
- Watch me try a new product out with help from Gemini Live (blog post – accessaces.com)
- Establishing a spoon theory policy at Intuit (blog post - last-child.com)
- Honoring mobile OS text size (blog post – adrianroselli.com)
- Designing for people with anxiety (blog post - tetralogical.com)
Sponsored classifieds
This week! Beyond technical accessibility: EU Accessibility Act compliance requirements webinar. Thursday, April 2nd at 10 AM Central, live-captioned webinar on Zoom. Register to attend.
Accelerate your entire portfolio’s digital accessibility with Accessible Web RAMP, from WCAG audit checklists to long-term automated violation monitoring. Start your free 14-day trial today!
Find accessibility issues before release. Abra Desktop is designed for testers, developers, and teams that care about accessibility. #SeriousAboutAccessibility
New to A11y
Martin Underhill explains the difference between figcaptions versus alt text. Dang. I always have to look up when I should use a figcaption, so this post helps.
Suggestions and corrections
Have a suggestion for something to be included in Accessibility Weekly? Did I make a mistake that doesn't belong on the Internet? You can either reply to this email or send a note to hello@a11yweekly.com.
Sponsorships and donations
You can sponsor Accessibility Weekly! For details, check out the sponsor page. If you or your company is interested, send a note to hello@a11yweekly.com.
If you enjoy the newsletter, consider making a donation.