The UI Accessibility Renaissance: Companies Discovering the 1990s Guidelines in 2025

The UI Accessibility Renaissance: Companies Discovering the 1990s Guidelines in 2025

Tech companies are patting themselves on the back for finally implementing accessibility standards that have existed since before some of their developers were born. Watch as product managers unveil “groundbreaking initiatives” that amount to adding alt text to images and ensuring websites work with keyboard navigation – revolutionary concepts from…checks notes…1999. Yes, the same year Britney Spears released “Baby One More Time” and people were panicking about Y2K.

The Grand Rediscovery Tour: Archeological Expeditions into Common Decency

The performative accessibility theater reached peak absurdity last month when a major tech platform (rhymes with “Placebook”) announced their “industry-leading commitment” to screen reader compatibility by implementing ARIA attributes that have been standard practice for 15+ years. Their press release somehow neglected to mention they were forced into compliance by multiple lawsuits that cost them more than their CEO’s annual coffee budget. And yet they presented it with the triumphant air of Columbus “discovering” America – complete with planting a flag on land other people had been living on for centuries.

At their recent developer conference, MetaGoogleSoft showcased their “pioneering work” in accessibility with a 20-minute segment demonstrating color contrast ratios that meet WCAG 2.0 standards… from 2008. The audience applauded as if they’d just witnessed the invention of sliced bread rather than basic human decency that’s literally been the law in most countries for decades. I half-expected them to follow up with a groundbreaking presentation on how websites should “load when you click on them” and “not give users viruses.”

One VP actually said – and I quote – “We’re proud to be at the cutting edge of accessibility innovation” while demonstrating a feature that the National Federation of the Blind had been requesting since the Obama administration. I’ve seen toddlers display more self-awareness when taking credit for “helping” bake cookies by spilling flour on the floor.

The Accessibility Compliance Cycle: A Perpetual Motion Machine of Incompetence

What’s truly impressive is how these companies manage to break their accessible interfaces with each redesign. “We’ve made our UI more intuitive by hiding essential functions behind unlabeled icons and gesture-based controls that don’t work with assistive technology!” Congratulations on your “innovative” design that exclusively works for people with perfect vision, motor control, and cognitive processing! Perhaps your next feature can be doors that only open if you’re exactly 5’9” and can perform a perfect pirouette.

The cycle continues with clockwork predictability:

1. Make site accessible (usually after legal threats and a PR nightmare)
2. Redesign for “aesthetic improvements” (because gray-on-slightly-different-gray is the height of design sophistication)
3. Break accessibility (while actively ignoring the accessibility team’s protests)
4. Get sued (surprised Pikachu face)
5. Act shocked (“How could this happen to our commitment to inclusion?”)
6. Repeat (because institutional memory in tech companies is shorter than a TikTok video)

At this rate, we might achieve universal web accessibility around the same time we colonize Mars – and I’m not optimistic about those Martian colonies. Elon would probably make all the airlocks voice-activated with no manual override.

The Accessibility Champion Scam: Participation Trophies for Basic Humanity

Every major tech company now has an “Accessibility Champion” program where employees who do the bare minimum in considering disabled users get special recognition. It’s the corporate equivalent of giving your child a gold star for not setting the house on fire. “You remembered disabled people exist? Here’s a digital badge for your profile and a $25 Starbucks gift card! Employee of the month material right here!”

These programs typically involve:

• A 30-minute online training that half the employees click through while in meetings
• A digital badge for LinkedIn that carries all the professional weight of a “My First HTML Page” certificate
• The privilege of being voluntold to do additional accessibility work without compensation
• A special Slack channel where everyone posts “we should really make our stuff accessible” once a month before immediately forgetting about it

Meanwhile, these same companies still haven’t figured out how to make their own internal tools accessible. The irony of watching a product manager present about accessibility features using a slide deck that isn’t accessible should be career-ending, but somehow it’s just Tuesday. The internal HR portal where you’d report this issue? Also not accessible. The document outlining the company’s accessibility policy? You guessed it – created as an inaccessible image-only PDF.

The “Edge Case” Excuse: When “Edge” Means “One In Six Humans on Earth”

The most blood-boiling phrase in tech regarding accessibility remains “that’s an edge case.” Ah yes, the classic edge case of… checks notes… 15% of the global population having some form of disability. If 15% is an “edge case,” then by that logic, iOS users, left-handed people, and everyone who lives in South America are also “edge cases” we can safely ignore.

One senior engineer at [REDACTED TECH COMPANY THAT RHYMES WITH “SCHMOOGLE”] literally said in a meeting: “Do we really need to support screen readers? How many blind people are actually trying to use our analytics dashboard?” When someone pointed out that the legal department might have thoughts about this approach, he responded with the immortal line: “Can’t they just sue us if it’s really a problem?”

Spoiler alert: They did. It was. The resulting settlement could have paid for making their entire product suite accessible seventeen times over. Penny wise, pound foolish, and morally bankrupt – the holy trinity of tech decision-making.

The “AI Will Fix It” Fantasy: Teaching Robots to Describe Paintings to the Blind

The latest evolution in accessibility theater is the promise that AI will magically solve all accessibility problems. “Our new AI-powered accessibility layer will automatically make everything accessible!” crows the press release, conveniently ignoring that their AI was primarily trained on data labeled by the same engineers who think tab indexes are a type of filing system.

Translation: “We’ve trained an ML model to guess what’s in unlabeled images with about 70% accuracy and automatically generate alt text that ranges from ‘mostly correct’ to ‘wildly offensive.’” Because nothing says “we care about our disabled users” like delegating their experience to an algorithm that occasionally describes a black woman in a professional headshot as “exotic looking female in tribal outfit” despite her wearing a standard business suit.

But sure, let’s trust the algorithms to solve human problems created by human laziness. What could possibly go wrong? It’s not like AI has ever showed bias or hallucinated content or just straight-up made things worse… oh wait.

The Hidden Cost of Inaccessibility: Beyond Compliance to Cold, Hard Cash

While companies treat accessibility as an annoying compliance checkbox somewhere below “order snacks for the office” and above “consider ethical implications of our business model,” they’re missing the obvious: inaccessible products exclude millions of potential customers. That’s not just ethically bankrupt—it’s bad business that would get you failed out of a first-year MBA program.

The global market of people with disabilities represents over $13 trillion in disposable income. But sure, keep arguing that adding proper keyboard navigation to your SaaS dashboard is “too expensive” while leaving all that money on the table. That’s like refusing to build a ramp to your store and then wondering why 15% of potential customers never come in.

I’ve sat in meetings where executives quibbled over a $50,000 budget for accessibility improvements while simultaneously approving millions for a rebrand that amounted to changing the logo’s blue to a slightly different blue. The ROI worksheet for this decision was presumably written in crayon.

How To Tell If Your Company Actually Cares About Accessibility: A Cynical Checklist

Here’s a simple test to determine if your company genuinely cares about accessibility or is just performing:

1. Do accessibility requirements appear in the initial spec or are they tacked on before launch like sprinkles on a burnt cake?
2. Are people with disabilities included in user testing, or do you just have Brad from marketing close his eyes for five seconds and declare “seems fine to me”?
3. Does your company have developers with disabilities on staff, or is your entire understanding of accessibility based on a Medium article you skimmed in 2019?
4. Is accessibility knowledge a requirement for senior engineering roles, or just a nice-to-have like “doesn’t microwave fish in the office kitchen”?
5. Does your CEO know what WCAG stands for without Googling it, or would they guess it’s a new JavaScript framework?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, congratulations—your company’s commitment to accessibility is as fake as a Silicon Valley promise of work-life balance. At least be honest about it instead of posting black squares on social media when it’s trendy to care.

Corporate Accessibility PSA: An Interpretive Translation

When a company says: “We’re committed to accessibility.” They mean: “We’ll commit to accessibility when the lawsuits get expensive enough.”

When a company says: “Accessibility is a journey.” They mean: “We have no intention of reaching the destination in your lifetime.”

When a company says: “We’re working to improve our accessibility.” They mean: “We’ve assigned our most junior developer to fix 5,000 accessibility issues in their 20% time.”

When a company says: “Our new AI feature automatically generates alt text!” They mean: “Our new AI feature will occasionally describe your CEO as ‘elderly man with probable dementia’ in company photos.”

When a company says: “We’ve appointed an Accessibility Champion!” They mean: “We’ve found someone willing to take the blame when we inevitably get sued.”

The Bare Minimum Award Goes To: Everyone in Silicon Valley

The tech industry deserves a special award for turning the absolute baseline of human decency—making products usable by everyone—into PR opportunities worthy of self-congratulation. “We’ve made our app technically usable by people with disabilities! Please ignore that we’ve been legally required to do this for 20+ years and that we’ll break it again in our next update! Also, please check out our blog post about how this makes us heroes!”

It’s like watching someone throw a parade because they finally stopped parking in handicapped spaces after being towed six times.

Next up: Tech companies will discover the revolutionary concept of “websites that load in less than 10 seconds” and expect standing ovations for their innovative thinking. “Our groundbreaking research shows users prefer sites that don’t crash their browsers! We’ll be presenting these findings at WWDC 2026.”

In the meantime, I’ll be over here watching companies unveil their “revolutionary commitment to accessibility” with the same enthusiasm I reserve for adults who expect praise for doing their own laundry. “You implemented basic keyboard navigation? Would you like a trophy or just a certificate to hang on your fridge?”

Welcome to 2025, where tech companies are finally implementing the digital equivalent of wheelchair ramps—and expecting you to be impressed that they’ve discovered the Americans with Disabilities Act a mere 35 years after it became law. At this rate, by 2055 they might discover that women and people of color also use their products! What a time to be alive.