Sad truth: we are making the web accessible for AIs, not for people.
Some sites now offer a text version for LLMs, but still skip real accessibility needs like proper heading structure, landmarks that screen reader users need.
https://www.techpolicy.press/the-web-is-being-made-accessible-for-ai-not-people/
It's not just the web, accommodations disability advocates pushed for years are only showing up now to help delivery robots. Zong and Elavsky call this the "ramping automation effect". And worse: those robots are causing harm to disabled people. Ironic, isn’t it?
In the end, if we let AI "solve" accessibility as a side effect, we're basically saying that disabled people's needs were never enough on their own. Accessibility is a civil right, not a byproduct.
Jul 6, 2026, 12:46 PM@stephaniewalter Exactly. CSS debug also still a human job. By the time I tell AI what to do, I had finished.
@stephaniewalter this this this! I wish I could boost this more than once. :)
@stephaniewalter wait have they re-named the curb cut effect??? The irony!
@bright_helpings yes, I think that was exactly the point. The author used it as base to show how ridiculous it was that, we need robots to "require" something to make it happen, since humans requiring is was not enough.
@stephaniewalter I've seen so much more ink spilled about how robotaxis get around cities than I do about how I a blind pedestrian am meant to get around cities (especially if they're going to have robotaxis in them!).
@bright_helpings yeah, it's infuriating. People will only care about money, not other fellow humans.
@alice We never learn from our past mistakes. I remember those times because it brought a big confusion: people thought that "accessibility" meant "being able to access on mobile phones with slow connection". Well, you need that too, but, that's not the current definition of the word.
AI™ is not a "new kind of user".
It's not any kind of user, its a tool for owners of corporations to take content.
Personally, I don't want corporate thieves on my site at all.
I do want to make it accessible to all humans.
@EricLawton yah, I've was already annoyed at "robots are users" when SEO was a thing and we used the same arguments "accessibility is good for SEO". And, I'm trying to stay polite on social media, but, F the robots, especially those that build corporate greed. I care about humans. I want people to care about humans first. How horrible is it to say "yeah, disabled people needs will be met only if this also meets robots needs".