blakewatson.com - I used Claude Code and GSD to build the accessibility tool I’ve always wanted
You know my thoughts on generative tools based on large language models, but this example of personal empowerment is undeniably liberating.
Link tags: accessibility
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Try text scaling support in Chrome Canary - Josh Tumath
There’s a new meta tag on the block. This time it’s for allowing system-level text sizing to apply to your website.
Accessibility For Everyone by Laura Kalbag
Laura’s classic book is now a web book that you can read for free online.
“AI is inevitable” is bullshit · Eric Eggert
LLMs are useful when you need a compromise between fast and good. You will never get a good outcome fast.
I’m afraid we are settling into a status of good enough when using “AI,” which is especially hurtful for accessibility.
Developing an alt text button for images on my website | James’ Coffee Blog
I like the idea of adding this to personal websites:
Mastodon shows an “Alt” button in the bottom right of images that have associated alt text. This button, when clicked, shows the alt text the author has written for the image.
I’m more proud of these 128 kilobytes than anything I’ve built since | by Mike Hall | Jul, 2025 | Medium
I don’t normally link to articles on Medium—I respect you too much—and I do wish this were written on Mike Hall’s own site, but this is just too good not to share.
And don’t dismiss this as a nostalgiac case study from the past:
At no point did the constraints make the product feel compromised. Users on modern devices got a smooth experience and instant feedback, while those on older devices got fast, reliable functionality. Users on feature phones got the same core experience without the bells and whistles.
The constraints forced us to solve problems in ways we wouldn’t have considered otherwise. Without those constraints, we could have just thrown bytes at the problem, but with them every feature had to justify itself. Core functionality had to work everywhere, and without JavaScript crutches proper markup became essential.
This experience changed how I approach design problems. Constraints aren’t a straitjacket, keeping us from doing our best work; they are the foundation that makes innovation possible. When you have to work within severe limitations, you find elegant solutions that scale beyond those limitations.
Introducing: Webbed Sites (Webbed Briefs)
I heard you like divs…
Hire HTML and CSS people
Every problem at every company I’ve ever worked at eventually boils down to “please dear god can we just hire people who know how to write HTML and CSS.”
80 / 20 accessibility · marcus.io
So my observation is that 80% of the subject of accessibility consists of fairly simple basics that can probably be learnt in 20% of the time available. The remaining 20% are the difficult situations, edge cases, assistive technology support gaps and corners of specialised knowledge, but these are extrapolated to 100% of the subject, giving it a bad, anxiety-inducing and difficult reputation overall.
How do we build the future with AI? – Chelsea Troy
This is the transcript of a fantastic talk called “The Tools We Still Need to Build with AI.”
Absorb every word!
The Web Accessibility Cookbook
Manu’s book is available to pre-order now. I’ve had a sneak peek and I highly recommend it!
You’ll learn how to build common patterns written accessibly in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You’ll also start to understand how good and bad practices affect people, especially those with disabilities.
Home - Sa11y
Another handy accessibility testing tool that can be used as a bookmarklet.
Manifesto for a Humane Web
I endorse this message.
This manifesto is intended as a personal response to the current state of the web. It is a statement of intent and a call to arms, inviting you, the reader, to go forth and build humane websites, and to resist the erosion of the web we know and love.
Write Alt Text Like You’re Talking To A Friend – Cloud Four
This is good advice:
Write alternative text as if you’re describing the image to a friend.
Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The bar to overriding browser defaults should be way higher than it is.
Amen!
On Nielsen’s ideas about generative UI for resolving accessibility
Per Axbom quite rightly tears Jakob Nielsen a new one.
I particularly like his suggestion that you re-read Nielsen’s argument but replace the word “accessibility” with “usability”:
Assessed this way, the
accessibilityusabiity movement has been a miserable failure.
AccessibilityUsability is too expensive for most companies to be able to afford everything that’s needed with the current, clumsy implementation.
jgarber623/aria-collapsible: A dependency-free Web Component that generates progressively-enhanced collapsible regions using ARIA States and Properties.
This is a really lovely little HTML web component from Jason. It does just one thing—wires up a trigger button to toggle-able content, taking care of all the ARIA for you behind the scenes.
The Folly of Chasing Demographics - YouTube
I just attended this talk from Heydon at axe-con and it was great! Of course it was highly amusing, but he also makes a profound and fundamental point about how we should be going about working on the web.
I worry our Copilot is leaving some passengers behind - Josh Collinsworth blog
Products of all kinds are required to ensure misuse is discouraged, at a minimum, if not difficult or impossible. I don’t see why LLMs should be any different.