💻 Chromebook Accessibility Tools 🧰 Select to speak, dictation, magnifier, face control, quick answers, reading mode, Screencast, extensions & more! ▶️ 30-min episode with the Innovation Squadcast controlaltachieve.com/2025/08/chrome… #EdTech #GoogleEDU Google for Education Google Accessibility

Ever imagined how blind people use the internet? A blind colleague told me that ordering food online felt like “gambling.” Sometimes the checkout worked, sometimes it didn’t. Don't wait till it affects you before it should matter to you.

We talk about “user journeys” in design, but for people with disabilities, that journey can be filled with dead ends. Accessibility is about removing those roadblocks so they can just live their lives. It really matters.

"Oh there are no captions".... It’s not “a minor inconvenience.” That is literally someone sitting in silence while everyone else laughs, learns, or connects. That’s the difference accessibility makes.

People who think "no one who needs accessibility uses my site"... Are you saying that if one of your users turn blind, they will stop needing your services? Or is it that your services will lock them out because it's inaccessible.

Web accessibility widgets can be hit or miss. The good ones don’t just sit there, they let people actually adjust things like text size, contrast, or keyboard nav in real time. Small but life-changing.

I’ve tried a lot of free accessibility widgets. Most feel like band-aids. The ones that actually help are the ones backed by real platforms. Equally AI’s widget, for example, goes deeper than “just a button.”

I once watched a user resize a browser window so narrow it looked broken… but they weren’t “breaking” it. That’s just how they work. Accessibility starts when you stop assuming everyone browses like you.

Web accessibility AI platforms are starting to feel less like “extras” and more like part of the dev stack. Imagine debugging and catching ADA compliance issues in the same workflow. That’s already possible with tools like Wave, Equally Ai and Userway.

Funny how we stress over “mobile-first” but never think “motion-first.” For some people, a parallax scroll is the digital version of seasickness.

Why do some designers love to hide menus behind clever icons? Hidden doesn’t equal elegant

ADA compliance isn’t about lawsuits. It’s about dignity. Tools like WAVE, Equally AI, and axe give us the means. The hard part? Caring enough to use them from the start.

AI widgets get a bad rep sometimes, but when it comes to accessibility they shine. Equally AI flags stuff I’d never catch on a first pass, while WAVE and axe are still my go-tos for the quick basics.

Sometimes the “loading spinner” feels less like feedback and more like mockery.

A lot of “free accessibility widgets” just slap on shortcuts. The trick is finding one that actually improves UX. Equally AI surprised me there with its synergy between human and AI inputs.

Dark mode is nice. True high contrast mode is life-saving.

Accessibility isn’t charity. It’s just good product sense. The more people who can use what you build, the more people will actually use it.

I keep seeing “AI widgets” everywhere. Feels like half of them are useless toys… until you find the ones that quietly fixes real issues (like text readability). Either User way, Equally Ai, and Equal Web should be used by every site.

Been poking around with different web accessibility AI platforms. Some are noise, but the good ones catch those sneaky errors humans miss, like when your form labels look fine but don’t actually read out loud.

Shoutout to WAVE. People know it for catching the obvious stuff, but my favorite is how it visualizes ARIA landmarks. Makes it clear if your page structure actually makes sense to screen readers.