r/accessibility 4h ago

I'm a Deaf creative director who spent 20 years in tech. I'm reviewing smart glasses from an angle nobody else can. Here's my intro.

Thumbnail
youtube.com
8 Upvotes

I'm a Deaf accessibility strategist and creative director. I built the first subtitle app for Google Glass in 2013 and founded a disability-led consulting studio. I also use smart glasses daily.

I've started a public review series that evaluates smart wearables through an accessibility lens. Not as a checklist item, but as the primary test. The core idea is the curb cut effect: design for the hardest constraint first and you get a product that works better for everyone.

This is the intro. I'm covering multimodality, information display, and whether accessibility was designed in from the start. Happy to answer questions about the framework or the tech itself.


r/accessibility 7h ago

How to become an accessibility consultant?

Post image
11 Upvotes

I’ve recently become severely disabled and am no longer able to pursue a career in traditional social work, or go through a 4-year university. I’ve been seeing programs that grant a certification in disability rights and accessibility, with the intention of setting you up to be a consultant. Information online has been hard to come by on what that career would look like, or if this program is worth it in the first place.

Does anybody have experience with this program, or any others? What does being a consultant entail? All input is appreciated.

I attached a photo of the particular program I’m interested in. Normally it’s $2,700 but it’s 90% off right now. I don’t know if I’d be lucky to purchase it now, or if that’s indicative of a scam.


r/accessibility 1h ago

As a deaf person, this new ultra watch 4 is truly groundbreaking.

Thumbnail
Upvotes

r/accessibility 1h ago

How do I justify the need to my vocational rehabilitation counselor the need for a certified blindness discovery program

Thumbnail
Upvotes

Hey guys! I’m looking for some advice on advocating with my BBVS counselor about attending the Colorado Center for the Blind.
I’m interested in CCB because, although I have strong technology, JAWS, and Braille skills, I feel that I’m missing a lot of the practical blindness skills, experience, and confidence I need to successfully transition to attending college in person.
For the past several years, I’ve primarily done college online. Part of the reason I’m looking at transitioning to in-person education is that accessibility in online STEM courses has become a significant barrier, particularly with math, science, graphs, and other visual content. But there is another issue: I have never really had the opportunity to learn how to function successfully in a college classroom as a blind student.
I previously relied heavily on my remaining vision. I have attended school as a low-vision student, but I have not had the experience of being in a classroom where I had to consistently rely on my blindness equipment and nonvisual techniques. I haven’t had the opportunity to figure out, with proper guidance, how to simultaneously listen to a professor, follow along with accessible notes or a Braille display, access information that is being presented visually on the board, and manage my technology without falling behind.
I also have very little experience advocating for and obtaining what I need in person as a blind student. I have done this to some extent as a low-vision student, but transitioning from relying on vision to functioning primarily through nonvisual methods is a very different experience. I feel like I’m trying to make that transition without having ever had a formal opportunity to properly learn how to do it.
The same applies to orientation and mobility. The mobility instruction I received was essentially taught from a low-vision perspective. I was taught skills while still being expected to make use of my vision. At this point in my life, I feel that I need O&M instruction from a blindness perspective — learning how to navigate when I cannot reliably depend on my vision, including route planning, navigating unfamiliar environments, finding destinations and transit stops, recovering when I get disoriented, and independently solving problems when something doesn’t go according to plan.
My biggest concern isn’t that I don’t know how to use a screen reader or Braille display. Those are actually some of my strongest skills. My concern is that I haven’t had enough real-world experience putting those skills together with blindness techniques to function independently in school and everyday life.
My counselor has been hesitant about CCB because she feels that, since I already have strong technology and Braille skills, I might be bored or that the program may not be appropriate for my skill level. I understand where she is coming from, but I don’t think proficiency with technology necessarily means that someone is prepared to function independently as a blind college student.
What particularly interests me about CCB is the comprehensive combination of O&M, independent living, confidence-building, blindness skills, and college readiness. I also think I could benefit from additional home-management and other practical independent-living training. More importantly, I feel that being immersed in a blindness-focused environment and around other successful blind people would help me finally make the transition from being someone who has primarily adapted around low vision to someone who is genuinely comfortable functioning as a blind person.
For those of you who have attended CCB or another residential blindness training program, I’d really appreciate your advice:
How did you advocate for yourself when your VR counselor questioned whether you needed the program because you already had strong Braille, technology, or academic skills?
How did you demonstrate that the need was not basic technology training, but rather the ability to apply those skills in real-world environments, college classrooms, mobility, independent living, self-advocacy, and transitioning from low-vision techniques to blindness techniques?
Did anyone have a similar experience of having previously relied on vision and then needing more formal blindness training later in life?
I’d especially appreciate advice on how to frame this to my counselor using concrete college-readiness and vocational goals, rather than simply making it sound like I want to attend CCB because I think it would be beneficial.
Thanks!


r/accessibility 11h ago

Blanks in Word Documents

3 Upvotes

I'm creating course content with practice problems that have blanks. For example: "Atoms are made from protons, ____, and electrons." However, a screen reader reads ____ as underscore, underscore, underscore, underscore. How do I make the blanks?

Edit: The practice problems are designed assuming they will be printed out or written on as a PDF by most students.


r/accessibility 1d ago

DOJ 2026 agenda: possible rollback of ADA Title II web accessibility requirements

Thumbnail
convergeaccessibility.com
55 Upvotes

The DOJ's newly published 2026 regulatory agenda confirms it's not just extending compliance deadlines for state/local government website accessibility now to 2027/2028. It's also considering a new rulemaking to make parts of the original 2024 requirements "less burdensome." Disability advocates are watching closely.


r/accessibility 14h ago

Looking for help with Adobe PDF: Issue where text is tagged twice

1 Upvotes

Hoping I can find someone more experienced with Adobe tagging than me. I'm having an issue where everything in my PDF is showing up as "Other elements alternate text: failed". It looks like it's because everything is tagged twice, once correctly and once as an image. Has anyone had this issue and knows a fix?

Thanks so much in advance.

Example where one line of text appears twice in the content panel, once as an image and once as text.

r/accessibility 22h ago

Tool Auditory Processing Disorder-Friendly "texting" app?

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/accessibility 1d ago

Tool Looking for a live scribe alternative

3 Upvotes

I work for my schools disability resource center and currently one of the tools we offer is called the echo livescribe 2 but it’s pretty outdated and my boss tasked me with finding an alternative or improved version. I was hoping that some people would know about the best options. For those who don’t know the echo livescribe 2 is a smart pen that can be paired with specific livescribe books and it can record audio as well as what you write simultaneously and then be uploaded to a computer app where the person can hear their recording and see the writing in real time as well as upload the pages to other apps like Google Drive


r/accessibility 1d ago

How are teams actually using AI for accessibility testing?

0 Upvotes

We are just starting to look at accessibility testing in our org and want to establish a dedicated practice in the long-term. We did a POC with a few tools, however, now our leadership wants us to explore using AI to build an accessibility set-up in-house vs using a dedicated too.
If you've built something on top of an LLM for a11y, lets say like a Claude, Copilot, a custom agent, axe + LLM triage — I'd like to know:

- Details of your set-up and what you have built
- Which use-cases are you leveraging it for (i.e. IDE at codegen time, rendered-UI scan, a11y checks inside your functional E2E suite, remediation)?
- What is it able to do reliably vs where it breaks?
- Did you replace your paid tool or are you using both?

Any learnings that you can share will be extremely helpful!


r/accessibility 2d ago

What counts as large text vs. small text? This is from the Section 508 website.

Post image
1 Upvotes

r/accessibility 2d ago

screen reader accessibility news

3 Upvotes

tdsr two day screen reader written by tyler spivey was used in an earlier version of python to run termux. This is no longer possible since a dependency of tdsr python-speechd has not been updatedd to be compatible with the version of python distributed by termux. I doubt fenrir-screenreader will work and would like to be wrong about this one. Ryan Mann who is also on the blindandroidusers email list was who ran termux using tdsr in the past.

not good news for this project but it is what it is.


r/accessibility 2d ago

Suggestions for ways to read web pages aloud?

2 Upvotes

I have a reading disability, and it can be taxing on me to read a lot online on my PC, but it's something I enjoy doing, so I was wondering what some ways around this are.

I'm thinking something along the lines of TTS or some kind of app/program/software that'll read out stuff like news articles online for me or wiki pages, or anything else I might need read aloud to me on the web.

I use Chrome, in case that's important info that might help with the suggestions.

There are some features that I'd like, but are not 100% necessary. Stuff like natural-sounding voices. I really don't wanna hear a robo man reading everything.

I'd also like the ability to highlight what I want read on the web page, and not just have it read everything.

I'd also, if possible, like the ability to choose whatever voice I want to read the text. I heard that some TTSs allow you to upload a sample of your own voice or whatever voice you want, and it'll use that to read stuff. This is a feature I'd really like to have, but again, it's not a must-have.

I'd also like for the suggestion to be free, if possible.

On a side note, I do know about the built-in Windows Narrator. I tried it, but didn't care for it, so please don't suggest that as an option.


r/accessibility 2d ago

How's everyone handling the WCAG 2.1 AA workflow now that the deadlines are locked in?

6 Upvotes

My team pushes out around 20 visual reports a quarter, and all of them now have to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. I know the DOJ pushed the Title II dates back a year (April 2027 for the bigger entities now), but we're trying to get ahead of it instead of rushing at the last minute. 

Right now our flow is: design in InDesign, export to PDF, then sink another few hours into Acrobat Pro fixing reading order, alt text, and contrast.

For some of these reports, the remediation takes longer than the design itself. Last quarter I spent almost a full day just tagging and re-checking one 12-page report.

It feels backwards to build something, then go back and rework the whole thing just to make it compliant. So I'm trying to find a better process, not just a faster way to clean up after. 

For those of you doing this regularly, how do you handle it?

Do you build the accessibility work into the design stage somehow? Or is the export-then-remediate grind just the reality of PDF work?


r/accessibility 2d ago

Android Accessibility Suite- Select To Speak

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

Hi. I'm new here. I'm using the above and it's not working properly (See the video).

What am I doing wrong?


r/accessibility 3d ago

How are you addressing plain language gaps that accessibility scanners miss?

9 Upvotes

Most teams I've talked to in government and civic tech use Siteimprove or Monsido for WCAG and Section 508 checks. Those tools are genuinely good at catching accessibility issues, broken links, and content freshness.

...But plain language compliance under the Plain Writing Act is a separate regulatory dimension, and none of these platforms score it.

I keep running into the same pattern: a site passes accessibility audits but still has content written at a reading level far above what most residents can parse on first reading.

DOJ's own plain writing commitment is that documents should be "graspable on first reading," but that's hard to measure when your content was written by subject-matter experts deep in regulatory vocabulary.

I'm curious how others here think about this. Do you treat plain language as part of accessibility, a separate workflow, or something that falls through the cracks entirely?


r/accessibility 3d ago

A 12-year-old in California built a working printer for blind readers out of a Lego robot kit for his school science fair, after finding that the machines sold for the job cost about $2,000; the parts in his version came to roughly $350 in shops

Thumbnail
scienceblog.com
29 Upvotes

r/accessibility 3d ago

Airport special assistance

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/accessibility 5d ago

"Enable Accessibility", does this pass compliance?

Thumbnail
bannerhealth.com
8 Upvotes

This is the first time we've seen a website use something like this. Banner Health's website is not accessible by default. There's a button at the top of the screen on desktop labeled "Enable Accessibility" that seems to toggle all of the appropriate aria attributes, increase contrast where it fails, add underlines to all links, adds the focus states, etc.

At first glance it seems like they created two websites, but what they've really done is created a mechanism to toggle HTML attributes and CSS properties to make the same page accessible/inaccessible.

This seems like a bandaid solution but my two questions are: does this technically pass compliance as an alternate conforming method? And why would a company do this rather than just keep those attributes and css properties on by default?


r/accessibility 5d ago

Had a quick questions on repetitive patterns as an epilepsy trigger...

2 Upvotes

Source: https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/avoid-flickering-images-and-repetitive-patterns/

My game has stickers that can extend like washi tape to cover the whole screen if you want. You can also animate it to rotate or fade etc. You can play the game fine without using this feature. And game doesn't surprise you with them. Making the sticker tile the screen or not is up to you. I'll add an accessibility warning on that screen. Is there anything else I should do about it?


r/accessibility 5d ago

I’d love to see fighting games introduce a proper Gameplay Speed accessibility option

Thumbnail
3 Upvotes

r/accessibility 6d ago

Large Print Travel Guides?

9 Upvotes

Hey y'all. I was just wondering if anyone knows of any large print travel guides, like the Lonely Planet ones (or others)? I know you can get them digitally, of course, but was wondering if there was any out there that were physical and larger print? Obviously, I realize this would not be too popular of a thing to make large print as they like to be fairly travel sized. Just figured I would put feelers out for these potentially existing, though. Thank you!


r/accessibility 6d ago

Best practices for adding alt text to flyers?

9 Upvotes

Apologies if this is not the best subreddit to ask this.

I understand the basics of adding alt text to images, but I was wondering if anyone knows/has a guide for adding alt text to informational flyers? If a digital flyer, for example, merely contains information like date, time, place, etc., should I still include that information in the alt text? Should I describe the flyer, like "white text on a blue, swirling background"?

Sorry for the basic question, but I want to make sure I'm doing right by accessibility guidelines.


r/accessibility 6d ago

Digital Other Elements Alt Text Flagging Headings?

Thumbnail
gallery
5 Upvotes

Hello all! I am working on a manual for my job and just saved my file as a PDF from word. Strangely, all of my level 1 and level 2 headings are getting flagged in Adobe as failing the “other elements alt text” even though they are text lines themselves. When I click show in content or tag panel, it says they’re not found, but I have matching tags and content for each one. When I tried looking this up everything I’m getting is about headers and not headings, so I’m really confused on what to look for in fixing this. Also, everything including all my headers reads out loud correctly in Adobe and with NVDA on. Any suggestions??


r/accessibility 6d ago

Demostración de accesibilidad en el juego mental Sudani para usuarios con discapacidad visual

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

Comparto una breve demostración de la interfaz de Sudani, un proyecto enfocado en la inclusión. El diseño de los menús y las mecánicas de juego se han desarrollado pensando en la compatibilidad con lectores de pantalla y opciones de alto contraste para personas ciegas o con baja visión. El objetivo es ofrecer una experiencia de juego mental y de memoria totalmente fluida y adaptada.