For this month's Office Hours, we're talking to members of our Design Team about how we're assessing and improving Accessibility in Thunderbird. We'd love to bring them your questions! Please leave them in a comment to this post and we'll do our best to answer as many as we can in the recording and blog post!
Today I have seen the idea of poisoning image alt text with lies or other nonsense to make data scraping harder. I have little doubt about it working, sounds like something that would prove effective.
However, I will refuse to engage in this behaviour. To me, the function of alt text is not to train AI models. True, it may be a side effect of it. But were I to begin fighting that, I'd lose the main function; I would no longer be providing assistance to the genuine people behind the screen that rely on alt text, for any reason from a list too long to enumerate in this post. Or new ones I hadn't even considered, but should have seen coming.
By all means, fight the good fight. But please remember the people you are doing it for while you are at it. Alt text may not be the medium to take.
With agentic AI contributing to the AI hype-cycle, I've been giving it some thought from the point of view of a disabled person, and also as an accessibility specialist who's already witnessing the arrival of the agentic web first-hand: tetralogical.com/blog/2025/08/…
Imagine being in a department store that sells clothes from multiple brands and having a personal shopping assistant to help you select the clothes you want to buy.
In today's episode of #accessibility shit-fuckery, GitHub have changed pull request reviews so that you have to hover the line of code in order for the add line comment button to appear. I guess they must be using AI for all their code now as their CEO believes is right and proper, and they forgot to disable the AI's ableism.
Maybe I don't quite hate it all, but I do hate talking with managers, marketing people, people not in web development about accessibility issues on websites because, usually, the conversations always go something like this.
Me. This complaint checks out. You need to do this and that and this to make it accessible.
Manager. But why isn't our accessible AI tool working?
Me. Because AI doesn’t understand your website and it won’t work anyway if someone is on a shit connection and the javascript won’t load.
Marketer. But then maybe the person needs to upgrade their internet.
Manager. Maybe the screen reader’s broken. Have they added AI to screen readers yet? That will fix everything. why doesn’t NVDA have AI yet? If NVDA had AI, we wouldn't need to worry about this.
Marketer. Did you try tabbing? I noticed you weren't tabbing at all, did you try that?
Me, internally. That's fucking it! You all deserve to be sued.
Today was the first day I thought about turning to the accessibility dark side and actually just becoming a plaintif in all these ADA lawsuits, because this level of, our website isn't the problem, when it clearly is, is getting on my last fucking nerves.
It's always managers and marketing people that are the first to ask, well, why doesn’t JAWS have AI yet? Why doesn’t NVDA just compensate for our shit web design?
Oh don't get me wrong, developers and I have had our share of, why do I need to use HTML? That's so 1980! Battles. You know, HTML can label a button, you don't need to use ARIA for that. Developer. But ARIA is richer! HTML is boomer technology!
Me, screaming internally. I hate you all!
But I'm getting more and more of these kinds of clients and so, like, I can fully understand why you'd join these law firms as a plaintiff and just going to town with demand letters and such, because this shit is maddening!
The best accessibility conversations I've had have been with developers. Not all the time, but more than not, they get it more than the dipshits in marketing and management.
My other alternative is I think everyone in marketing needs to take a mandatory web development class, and pass, and have a certificate.
🆕 blog! “How long does it take to upgrade an eBook?”
The older I get, the more comfortable I become with complaining. Not merely moaning on social media, but writing a direct email to the perpetrator of some annoyance.
I'd purchased an eBook and was appalled by how crappy the accessibility was. If you don't know, modern ePub books are just HTML…
I must admit I was dismayed when I read about the price increases for #JAWS. I’ve been using it for nearly 20 years. I’m no expert, but I’ve got it set up the way I like it to do the things I need to do. I’ve still got a year left on my latest SMA, but at treble the price, can I justify taking out the new Home subscription. I suppose it works out at around £35 per month, and a screen reader is essential for me, but many folk won’t be able to afford that, especially as it’s only available through an annual payment. Maybe it’s time to try #NVDA. #Accessibility
Congress has reintroduced the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act (TCIEA). This bill works to ensure that people with disabilities are not paid subminimum wage under an almost 100-year-old piece of legislation that allows certain businesses with a specific certificate to do so. The bill will work to eliminate such working environments and help transition people currently in such settings into a more integrated work situation. To ask your member of Congress to support the bill, go to speak4.app/lp/9801enwx/?ts=175….
GPT-5 could be launching today. As a ChatGPT Teams user, I may get access. If that happens, I’ll go live on YouTube to test it, walk through what’s new, and discuss accessibility and real-world use. Let’s see what @OpenAI delivers. youtube.com/@tayarndt #GPT5 #AI #YouTubeLive #Accessibility #ChatGPT #OpenAI
What's striking about accessibility is its binary impact on brand perception. Companies that ignore accessibility are increasingly perceived as "evil" - as deliberately excluding people with disabilities...
Learn how to advocate for accessibility, drive change without authority, and connect inclusive design to business impact, with practical tips, strategies, and real-world examples.
Our In-Process blog is out! This week featuring: - NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2025 - NVDA 2025.2 Beta 5 - How to test an NVDA Beta? - Extra voices updates (Including Eloquence and Vocalizer)
Drum roll please... my two projects for the RevenueCat #Shipaton will be Bouquino and Accessibility Testers 🎉
🐐 Bouquino is an app that makes reading in your second language a breeze! 🧪 Accessibility Testers is an app for hiring real users of assistive tech to test your app for accessibility.
As a developer, I try to make my software as accessible as possible for everyone. Unfortunately, I often lack a view from the user's perspective. I received a list from @dankeck with at least 10 suggestions for improvements, most of which I implemented in one night as if in a fever dream. The game is probably still a long way from being a screen reader user's dream, but I'm doing my best. Step by step! #webdev #a11y
I wrote this blueprint for a web app that would make it easier for people to build voices and languages for different TTS engines. It's vague, but it's a start if anyone wants to contribute to it or eventually create the real thing. Boosts appreciated, as always. github.com/lower-elements/Voic… #TTS #Accessibility #AI #ML
Something to always be aware of: Many wheelchair users can stand and move around for brief periods of time. Not all wheelchair users are paralysed. Reasons for wheelchair use are numerous and varied.
Some wheelchair users choose not to stand in public because chances are they will be chastised and harassed if they do. With more awareness and understanding this risk can hopefully diminish over time.
For example, if a wheelchair user is able to retrieve their own wheelchair from the boot/trunk of their car, this does not mean they are ”faking”, and accusing them of this is ableist in itself.
”Ambulatory wheelchair user” is something you can search for to learn more, as many are sharing their experiences online, like Lauren:
Please boost for reach, for any OnePlus users or staff:
I wrote a review of my OnePlus 13 on OnePlus' community site. If you're a member there, please like it to show support for the accessibility issues I brought up. I'd really like to get these fixed, since this is a powerful phone that's got Google's TalkBack, not Samsung's moldy fork, and is great overall, besides the accessibility issues. I'd love to be able to recommend this phone as an all-around great phone for blind people.
as the debate about "if there are no gaps, then the video *can't* have any audio description, so it *passes* 1.2.3 and 1.2.5 automatically without needing to do anything at all" rages on, I made a little illustrative video ... youtube.com/watch?v=nZjWBjN1YF… #a11y #accessibility #barrierefreiheit
To illustrate the point/focus the discussion on https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/4460 here's an example video that, to my mind, clearly should FAIL...
Unless you only translate never-hidden content, your `aria-label`s never change, your content is an arbitrary subset of maybe only a dozen languages, and it never has a `<code>` element.
As of my 25 July 2025 update at the end of this post, aria-label auto-translation support is less spotty than when I first wrote this post, but still unreliable. It does, actually. Sometimes.
After two weeks of writing, revising, and trying to make everything as digestible as possible, I finally published "GNOME Calendar: A New Era of Accessibility Achieved in 90 Days", where I explain in detail the steps we took to turn GNOME Calendar from an app that was literally unusable with a keyboard and screen reader to an app that is (finally) accessible to keyboard and screen reader users as of GNOME 49!
There is no calendaring app that I love more than GNOME Calendar. The design is slick, it works extremely well, it is touchpad friendly, and best of all, the community around it is just full of wonderful developers, designers, and contributors worth …
The accessibility link is a lie: my adventures in weaponizing corporate virtue signalling, by WeirdWriter@caneandable.social sightlessscribbles.com/posts/2…
At NV Access we are always interested in understanding the satisfaction of our NVDA users. Plus we like to understand clearly what is important to you and also identify what we can do more effectively. We encourage you to complete the NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2025 to assist us with improving the NVDA user experience. It is a short, three question survey, which is anonymous and does not require signing in.
At NV Access we are always interested in understanding the satisfaction of our NVDA users.
Plus we like to understand clearly what is important to you and also identify what we can do more effectively.
***Attention! If you miss MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM, and/or ICQ, this is for you! If you use a screen reader and want a 100% accessible messenger client, this is also for you.* This works with Windows XPthrough 11, and I'm logged into it as I write! It's called Escargot, and it revives Windows Live/MSN Messenger. This is the original software, but it has been patched so that it connects to the escargot.chat server and not the Microsoft one. It is 100% free and accessible with NVDA and I'm sure JAWS as well. They also have projects for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and ICQ, including for Android and IOS, and are working on a web client for MSN. (I don't know if AIM or ICQ are accessible with screen readers, as I have never tried them). Anyway, if you're over twenty-one (my personal request), have read my profile here, and wish to add me, I am dandylover1@escargot.chat. You can find everything here.
Note: If you already have Windows Live/MSN Messenger on your system, you will still need to download their version and create an account. Your Microsoft, MSN, or Hotmail one won't work for signing in. Also, remember to click on RUN_AFTER_INSTALL.exe, in order to patch the program to the Escargot server.
I often get asked about how I do software development with a #ScreenReader and I also have some thoughts about #DevTool #Accessibility. Finally found the time to write my thoughts down properly.
I am not going to dive into the details of and . Go read Scott’s 2019 post How do you figure? for an overview. That said, since Scott’s post there has been movement on the AAPI mapping (partly by Scott).
“Public Broadcasting, the FCC, and Why I Turned Down the FCC Chairman’s Award for Advancement in Accessibility (by Larry Goldberg)” lflegal.com/2025/07/larry-gold…
Web Design References: News and info about web design and development. The site advocates accessibility, usability, web standards and many related topics.
![A square graphic with a figure and text. The figure is a cute, small shark in pink lurking behind a wall of stones. Below the figure, the text shows in huge letters "< polycule > and in smaller font size "- a geeky and efficient [matrix] client". The background is deep black.](https://fedi.ml/photo/preview/640/691008 "A square graphic with a figure and text. The figure is a cute, small shark in pink lurking behind a wall of stones. Below the figure, the text shows in huge letters \"< polycule > and in smaller font size \"- a geeky and efficient [matrix] client\". The background is deep black.")
