Tech Notes
As we delve deeper into 2025, the rapid speeds at which technology is advancing is showing no signs of slowing down. From the invention of wireless flying robots with a wingspan smaller than a penny, to the nearly daily developments made to generative artificial intelligence (AI), it can be tricky to keep up with everything. The field of digital accessibility is no stranger to these innovations, either. As discussed in the previous installment of this series, “Missing a Human Touch: Why Automated Testing and AI Don’t “Solve” Digital Accessibility… Yet,” there are many browser extensions and applications that scan a website and address issues discovered, typically referred to as automated accessibility testing tools. However, as of right now, this process still relies heavily on another important counterpart: humans.
Our Current Landscape
You might be wondering: in such a high-tech age, why do tools like these still rely on people? Shouldn’t they just know what to do and handle everything themselves?
While this would be ideal (for reasons we’ll address later), this isn’t our current landscape; we know that these tools aren’t that advanced yet. As a matter of fact, most automated testing tools, such as the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) and axe DevTools, are quite transparent about their limitations. As also addressed in the previous installment of this series, both tools come with warnings informing their users that they should only be used alongside manual human testing.
Are there other tools on the market that claim they can fix these issues by themselves? Absolutely.
Do they actually deliver on that promise? Absolutely not.
These popular tools, known as AI-powered accessibility overlays, portray themselves as an all-in-one solution; not only will they discover issues, but they’ll fix them too! Unfortunately, these tools don’t fix anything; they serve a modified version of the website to the user without changing anything in the source code. Therefore, these accessibility issues still exist on the site; the overlay just “hides” them from the user… but sometimes it doesn’t even do that. There are many types of issues that overlays skip during their testing process (Guideline 2.1: Keyboard Accessible, anyone?), so these fundamental issues will go undetected and unfixed. Additionally, when an issue is discovered, the overlay doesn’t always apply a proper solution and risks making a site even more inaccessible.
So, we know at this time that automated accessibility testing tools and overlays cannot ‘solve’ digital accessibility… but what if they could?
What Is (Potentially) on the Horizon?
When tools are developed that are capable of discovering and fixing any and all accessibility issues, what’s next? Humans won’t be essential to this process anymore, right? So, what happens then?
Luckily, tech can’t get rid of us that easily! (At least, not yet…?)
The human experience is something unique to… well, humans. AI isn’t at the point where it can truly understand what it’s like to be human. If it ever does become this sentient, this may occur many years after the development of full-solution accessibility tools. Since we have this human advantage over AI, we’ll be able to center our focus on enhancing the experiences of every person using the web.
Why Is This Important?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are quite robust, but they are not completely comprehensive. During accessibility audits, it is common to find best practice or usability issues that don’t fall under these guidelines. As a result, these findings can be overlooked or deprioritized in the development and/or remediation process, and thus go unsolved.
Unfortunately, while these findings aren’t projected to be as severe as the accessibility issues covered under WCAG, they can still negatively impact a user’s experience on a website. Some commonly discovered examples include:
- Links opening in a new tab or window without warning the user ahead of time, pulling them out of the context of their current tab or window.
- Buttons and links performing incorrect actions, such as a button bringing the user elsewhere like a link would, or a link performing an action like a button and maintaining the user’s current position on the page.
- Issues of this type may fail WCAG 1.3.1: Info and Relationships, depending on the context. If it sits in more of a gray area between button and link behavior, it is treated as a usability issue.
- Skipped heading levels, illogical heading structure, and missing or multiple <h1> tags on one page.
- Link text that is not visually distinguishable from surrounding non-link text, meaning users might not be aware that the text is actually a link.
- A keyboard accessible component that takes significantly more time and effort to navigate and/or operate than with a mouse.
- An example of this might be a listbox with no search feature that contains many results. Mouse users can scroll through this component and quickly select an item, but keyboard users must navigate manually through each item until they reach their desired option.
These are just a few examples of usability issues that might be discovered on a website. A lot of the time, issues such as these are specific to a site, page, and/or component, so unearthing them can take plenty of close attention and effort.
Ensuring a website offers a great user experience is beneficial in many ways. It is beneficial to those using the site because they won't be confused or frustrated when navigating through and interacting with the site’s content. They’ll leave with a positive outlook on the site, on their experience, and potentially even on the site owner. This last point leads to another area of appeal, particularly for businesses or vendors. When users have a positive experience on a site, they’re more likely to return and recommend it to others, leading to an increase in sales, engagement, and/or site traffic.
Conversely, when anyone has a negative experience using a product or site, there’s a high possibility they won’t use it again. They will likely seek out another option, and if one doesn’t exist now, there’s a slim chance that will last long given how quickly technology is advancing. The potential for a company to lose a massive part of its consumer base lies not only in how they handle accessibility, but also how they ensure the user experience is a positive one that makes their consumers feel understood and considered.
Ultimately, as technology advances and AI eventually learns how to solve all issues and barriers impacting digital accessibility, we can prioritize the improvement of usability across the web to ensure all users have an enjoyable experience.
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, our current reality doesn’t consist of full-scale accessibility tools that discover and fix all issues on a page without fail. Fortunately, however, technology is advancing at light speed, so this concept may become reality sooner than we think. While this is an exciting premise, it is essential to ensure that people with disabilities are included in every step of the development process. Humans must be kept in the loop to ensure these tools are working as expected and trained properly, with no unintentional biases. This and similar topics are discussed in further detail in AFB’S Research Report titled “Empowering or Excluding: New Research and Principles for Inclusive AI”.
When these full-scale accessibility tools do exist, they will provide us with the bandwidth we need to make usability a priority rather than something that would be “nice to have.” We, as humans, can tackle the issues that aren’t covered by WCAG to ensure all users have a positive experience navigating, interacting with, and understanding content across websites. Until then, we can continue our work in accessibility and usability testing, engineering and the like, and we can further expand on the importance of designing with users in mind, to ensure that everyone can experience an accessible and usable web.
About the Author
Alexis Hubbard is Digital Accessibility Resident at the American Foundation for the Blind. Having graduated from the University at Buffalo with a B.S. in Computer Science, Alexis enjoys digging into the technical side of digital accessibility. Outside of Alexis’s creative endeavors, you might find them nerding out about an accessible component they created (and likely broke for the sake of demonstrating different fixes), or deep diving into various areas of research as they continue to learn how to make the web a more accessible and enjoyable place for all people.
About AFB Talent Lab
The AFB Talent Lab aims to meet the accessibility needs of the tech industry – and millions of people living with disabilities – through a unique combination of hands-on training, mentorship, and consulting services, created and developed by our own digital inclusion experts. To learn more about our internship and apprenticeship programs or our client services, please visit our website at www.afb.org/talentlab.
