Best of Accessibility — December 2025

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   Article

   Read the Tea Leaves·18w

   The <time> element should actually do something

   The HTML `<time>` element was designed to semantically mark up dates and times with machine-readable datetime attributes, but browsers and assistive technologies don't actually do anything useful with it. Despite being used on roughly 8% of web pages, it remains largely inert beyond basic rendering. Search engines may use it for date snippets, though Google's documentation recommends Schema.org markup instead. The element represents an unfulfilled promise of semantic HTML—browsers could theoretically offer calendar integration, date localization, or enhanced accessibility features, but none have implemented such functionality.

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   Article

   Adrian Roselli·19w

   You Can’t Make Something Accessible to Everyone

   Accessibility is fundamentally about people, not just technical compliance. WCAG conformance (even at AAA level) doesn't guarantee universal accessibility due to varying user needs, contexts, technologies, and abilities. Rather than claiming something is universally accessible, practitioners should specify what accessibility features are implemented. The goal is continuous improvement to serve more people, acknowledging that perfect accessibility for everyone is unattainable given human diversity and technological limitations.

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   Article

   Lobsters·17w

   You Can't Opt-Out of Accessibility

   Web accessibility is a fundamental requirement, not an optional feature. The industry has deprioritized accessibility in favor of developer convenience, treating it as an afterthought rather than a core responsibility. Legal mandates like the EAA and ADA have led to checkbox compliance rather than genuine improvement. Accessible design benefits everyone through universal design principles like captions, alt text, and intuitive interfaces. Real accessibility requires hiring professionals, integrating accessibility into every development phase, testing with actual users of assistive technologies, and recognizing it as everyone's responsibility. The human cost of inaccessible products is severe for people with disabilities who face physical exhaustion and exclusion from digital experiences.

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   Article

   CSS-Tricks·17w

   Toon Title Text Generator

   Andy Clarke released a tool that generates cartoon-style typography with configurable options for font, color, stroke, spacing, and shadows, outputting ready-to-use CSS. The tool pairs with Splinter.js, a text-splitting library that wraps each character in accessible markup using ARIA attributes to prevent assistive technology issues, improving upon traditional solutions like SplitText.js.

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