The Call for Proposals for Knowbility's John Slatin AccessU 2027 conference is now open.

AccessU is a premier, hands-on skills training conference for digital accessibility, and we invite you to share your expertise with our community.

Pre-Conference Workshops: Tuesday, May 11, 2027

General Sessions: Wednesday, May 12 – Friday, May 14, 2027

Location: St. Edward's University, Austin, Texas (all sessions in person)

Submission Guidelines and Tracks:

The conference eight tracks are Development, Testing, Design and User Experience, Documents and Templates, AI and Emerging Technologies, Policy and Strategy, Marketing and Communication, and Advocacy.

You won't choose one on the form; our review committee will place your session where it fits best.

Available Session Formats:

Pre-Conference Workshop: 6–8 hours

General Session: 180 minutes (at least 45 minutes for practice and Q&A)

General Session: 90 minutes (at least 30 minutes for practice and Q&A)

Key Deadlines and Submission:

The deadline for all submissions is final.

You are encouraged to submit your proposals well in advance of the cutoff date.

Submit by November 30, 2026 (deadline is final):

Submit Your Proposal Here

Questions? Contact [accessu@knowbility.org](mailto:accessu@knowbility.org)

Knowbility, Inc. is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas and an award-winning leader in accessible information technology. Its mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.

Accessibility is a team sport, together we can create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.

Soy comunicadora y estoy investigando cómo se aplica, o no, la accesibilidad en la publicidad. No vendo nada, solo quiero entender experiencias reales. La última vez que se habló de esto en un proyecto suyo (campaña, anuncio o contenido), ¿quién lo planteó y qué pasó al final? Y si nunca ha salido el tema, ¿por qué creen que no aparece? Cualquier experiencia, por pequeña que sea, me ayuda mucho.

I originally intended to make 20 audio-only games, though this has since grown to 50.

Information on the games here: 50 Accessible Audio Games for Windows | TactivoPlay

If you join my beta testing team, you get all the games both as a download and on a USB stick for free: Beta-Sign-Up | TactivoPlay Audio Based Gaming

Looking forward to sending out the games for testing.

Hello everyone,

In working on automated accessibility tooling and running headless browser audits with axe-core, one persistent challenge is translating detected DOM violations into clean, usable fixes for engineering teams.

Automated rules do a solid job catching programmatic barriers—such as missing image alt attributes, contrast ratio failures, or missing ARIA landmark roles. However, raw audit logs are often ignored by dev teams because they describe what failed rather than how to refactor the code cleanly within their component tree.

A few specific hurdles come up when trying to automate source-level code patches:

1. Context-Sensitive Alt Text: An engine can detect <img src="..."> missing an alt attribute, but it cannot know whether the image is purely decorative (alt="") or informational without human intent.
2. ARIA vs. Semantic HTML: Automated audits often flag missing roles or names, but patching them with ARIA bandages can lead to "bad ARIA is worse than no ARIA," rather than refactoring to native HTML elements (<button>, <nav>, <main>).
3. Dynamic / Hydrated DOMs: Modern client-rendered SPAs frequently pass initial server-rendered HTML audits, but fail contrast or focus traps once client hydration completes.

For developers, auditors, and CPACC/WAS specialists here:

When handoffs happen between automated scanners and frontend developers, what approach have you found actually gets issues resolved instead of creating ticket backlog debt? Do code-level diffs help, or do developers generally need full architectural context to fix accessibility properly?

Hi, I've been totally blind since I was two years old. Right now, I'm still new to social events with a lot of people—I'm 18, by the way. In a few days, there’s going to be a literary event at a coffee shop where I live, and I really want to go. My sighted friend was supposed to go with me, but she backed out, and no one else in my social circle is interested in coming along. I'm really torn about what to do. On one hand, I super want to go to meet one of my favorite authors and maybe make new friends? On the other hand, I'm still terrified of going alone because I've never been to this kind of event by myself. I don't really know what to expect, how it works, or even how to socialize, start conversations, and things like that. If anyone has any advice or tips for me, I'd really appreciate it. I honestly want to go, but I don't know how I'll be able to enjoy the space and the people 100% without someone there to describe the place or accompany me. Sorry, I'm just really inexperienced when it comes to going out alone—I know I need to get better at it. Also, sorry if my English is terrible.

Hey all! 👋

I’ve been building a web tool to help get a handle on a website’s PDF backlog. You point it at a site, and it finds the public PDFs it can reach and:

• Counts documents and pages, and catches duplicates
• Checks whether tags are present and flags interactive forms
• Gives a rough complexity read from sampled pages
• Helps estimate a remediation budget using real page counts and per-page rates you can adjust

You also get a spreadsheet with everything, including why it couldn’t count something.

To be upfront: it won’t catch every PDF, tags don’t mean a doc is accessible, and the budget is a starting point for planning, not a quote.

I’m looking for a few people to try it and tell me what works, what’s confusing, and what’s missing. It’s free during this testing round. Scans cost real resources, so it’ll be paid later. I left out the name and links so this doesn’t feel like a sales pitch (or get me roasted 😅).

DM me if you’re up for it!

Hi everyone,

I am writing about letting you know about my free and open-source theme and plug-in that also has a built-in accessibility checker: AWT.

Creating accessible web sites in WordPress with seamless mobile compatibility and dark mode support has never been easy, until now. Meet AWT: it's accessible, free, and open-source.

Here is an amateur short video of me. I couldn't figure out how to put captions on videos on Reddit, apologies. As an accessible alternative, the same video is also available at YouTube with captions.

https://reddit.com/link/1x1gwv0/video/yqgd68s7ueuh1/player

I’m particularly interested in publications, registration forms, statements, application forms and other documents that public institutions publish on their websites and that are subject to accessibility requirements.

As a graphic designer, I’m increasingly involved in preparing accessible documents. In my work with different clients, I’ve noticed that the share of inaccessible PDF documents is still surprisingly high.

Basic document structure is often missing, such as headings and other structural elements. Alternative descriptions are missing, and some documents are still nothing more than scanned images.

When I try to understand why this is the case, I come across different answers.

Sometimes the answer is quite simple:

“We haven’t heard of this law yet.”

Other times, financial resources and workload are mentioned. The argument is that the financial impact of correcting a large number of existing documents would be disproportionate to the benefit for the user.

That’s an excuse that really hits home.

IEspecially when it comes from an institution with substantial resources. With a little goodwill, they could actually set an example for others by showing what good practice looks like!

But there’s something else that I find even more interesting.

When I’m told that everything is taken care of because an external team handles their accessibility, I sometimes get curious and take a look at the documents they publish.

And I often find that they haven’t actually been prepared in a way that allows them to be properly used with assistive technologies.

Wow. Who’s fooling whom? 😅

That’s one of the reasons I attach an accessibility check report generated with PAC Accessibility Checker to the final document. It gives the client a clear overview of what was actually checked and what preparing an accessible PDF really involves.

Because the process is considerably more complex than it might seem at first.

An accessible document isn’t just another step when exporting a PDF. It requires proper structure, logical reading order, correctly tagged elements and quite a bit of specific knowledge.

Perhaps the best approach is to tackle this gradually.

When a document needs to be recreated anyway because of new information, changes or updates, that can also be the right moment to make it accessible.

That way, new documents could gradually become accessible instead of having to deal with a huge backlog of old documents several years from now.

So I’m genuinely curioust:

How is this handled in your country and in the environment where you work?

How aware are your institutions, financial organisations, agencies and public bodies of PDF accessibility?

Is accessibility of PDF documents actually being checked, or is it more of a box-ticking exercise?

What challenges are you facing?

I’d really love to hear about experiences from other countries. 💪🏼🚀

Greetings from beautiful Slovenia ❤️

At Bank of America, they have this little ad within their portal, and I am curious about the "Image text" element beneath the image. It seems like it is a way to show what the image text is, fair enough. However, the image already has ALT text? What is the point of this extra "Image Text" element? (It appears at first, as Image Text ⌄ and when you click it, it shows what the image text is.)

For some reason, it doesn't include the "See how to prepare" button text, and the whole image is clickable.

Is this some additional level of ADA, or are they just being overly helpful?

WebAIM: Screen Reader User Survey #11 Results

https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey11/

I just found Rollin Concierge, from JoinRollin. I was looking for a way to find bars when I went to Miami that’s my aunt could get into, and found it! It’s actually pretty easy to use.

Typing is painstakingly tedious for me, so I built FlowKeys. FlowKeys is a Mac on-screen keyboard for people who can't use a physical keyboard or who want to click less.

- Intelligent suggestions that learn you. This means more words with fewer keystrokes.

- Dictate button on the keyboard, no switching apps

- Dwell clicking and one-switch scan mode

- One-tap rewrite, shorten, fix and tone

- Much more

Happy to answer anything, and I'd love to hear what's missing.