Watching the current wave of AI tools, the shifts in digital accessibility, and the growth of job roles in this field, I see AI-powered A11y auditing and Agent Skills booming. While I’ve personally benefited from these, I’m left with a deeper sense of uncertainty: To what extent can AI truly help digital accessibility become universal? Or more importantly, how can I make AI do it?
I previously built Accesserty, a side project designed as an ecosystem connecting everything from user interaction to enterprise production, auditing, and analytics. The goal was to make accessibility profitable for businesses so they would fully embrace it. However, the reality is that many steps still require high costs, and sustainable maintenance remains a massive challenge.
AI still hasn’t made these processes “easy,” especially when it comes to manual auditing, where its help is still limited. To be honest, I feel a bit frustrated. My previous framework was based on current development workflows — essentially a “cost-reduction” approach. Perhaps I need a disruptive innovation to break through this “AI is great but limited” deadlock.
I’ve also noticed a trend: while designers and influencers in my environment are becoming more aware of digital accessibility, most are still just solving common issues. Their understanding of the broader A11y knowledge base is still shallow. The industry is stuck in a “get-by” phase — using tools just to pass compliance. There’s no big shift because accessibility hasn’t yet proven to bring clear benefits to businesses. Most are driven by the “fear of being fined” or by ESG requirements.
This quote from a recent article on a11yjobs hits home:
"Much of the hiring activity is concentrated in a narrow band of roles, driven by compliance pressures rather than genuine organizational buy-in. Companies are hiring because they have to — not always because they want to build lasting accessibility practices."
Both approaches are “doing accessibility,” but the starting point changes everything. This will be the focus of my research in the next stage.