4 ms·

If agents is what it finally takes to get good a11y I'll take it. I'll bitch about it, but I'll take it.

by ctoth 5mo ago

merlindru 5mo ago
i think this goes both ways too :) agents have been a boon for everyone with disabilities, carpal tunnel, RSI, ADHD, anything and now the fact that interfaces need to be accessible to agents, not just humans, ironically increases it for humans in return
- lopis 5mo ago
  And lets not forget that not all disabilities are chronic. Many disabilities are situational or temporary. AI is a great assist for a hangover day for example...
tomjakubowski 5mo ago
Playwright, the end-to-end testing framework for the web, provides a strong incentive to give sites good a11y: Playwright tests are an absolute delight to read, write and maintain on properly accessible sites, when using the accessibility locators. Somewhat less so when using a soup of CSS selector and getByText()-style locators. One thing I am curious about is a hybrid approach where LLMs work in conjunction with vision models (and probes which can query/manipulate the DOM) to generate Playwright code which wraps browser access to the site in a local, programmable API. Then you'd have agents use that API to access the site rather than going through the vision agents for everything.
- lsaferite 5mo ago
  Using playwright-cli with Claude code is highly effective for debugging locally deployed web apps with essentially zero setup.
- tyingq 5mo ago
  Was looking for this comment. I'd like to see this approach in the comparison...having the LLM build a playwright script and use it. I suspect it would beat time-to-market for the api, and be close-ish in elapsed time per transaction. Harder to scale if it's doing a lot of them, I suppose.
- giancarlostoro 5mo ago
  This is precisely how the Playwright MCP works, which lets something like Claude directly test a website. https://playwright.dev/docs/getting-started-mcp#accessibility-snapshots https://playwright.dev/docs/getting-started-mcp#accessibilit... I've mentioned several times and gotten snarky remarks about how rewriting your code so it fits in your head, and in the LLM's context helps the LLM code better, to which people complain about rewriting code just for an LLM, not realizing that the suggestion is to follow better coding principles to let the LLM code better, which has the net benefit of letting humans code better! Well looks like, if you support accessibility in your web apps correctly, Playwright MCP will work correctly for you. Amazing.
- phatskat 5mo ago
  There is also Testing Library, which I’ve mostly seen and used for unit tests (vitest) and component tests (Storybook), that practically forces you into setting things up in an accessible way. The methods for finding elements are along the lines of “find by ARIA role” or “get by label” - in fact, querying the DOM with selectors is afaik either not a part of the library or very difficult to do because their focus is ensuring your app is actually accessible as part of your testing strategy.
pjc50 5mo ago
Very real risk of this going in reverse: people building inaccessible websites to prevent AI use.
- stingraycharles 5mo ago
  That’s such an extremely small niche of people it’s not a real risk.
- blurbleblurble 5mo ago
  "AI" is a made up hype thing. It's just computers and computer programs. For real!
- solenoid0937 5mo ago
  Those people probably aren't working on anything useful anyways, so its no big deal.
  - 20k 5mo ago
    I've found that by far the most useful websites as a programmer are also the ones most resistant to AI. This would be a huge loss for anyone vision impaired
    - claytonjy 5mo ago
      What sorts of sites are you thinking of? To me, “most useful to a programmer” evokes docs and blogs and github issues and forum posts. I suppose some forums might be AI-resistant (login wall), but the others are trivially AI accessible.
      - irishcoffee 5mo ago
        GitHub is naturally LLM resistant via its new uptime feature… I’ll show myself out.
      - Rebelgecko 5mo ago
        Plenty of Linux-y websites use Anubis. Arch Wiki and IIRC some other distros too.
linkjuice4all 5mo ago
I mean…I guess. But this is ridiculous - how many layers does our technology need to bash through to update two records on remote systems? I get that value is being added at some point - but just charge some micropayment for transactions. This is just too much.
- lazide 5mo ago
  Ever read Vernor Vinge’s a deepness in the sky? Digital archeologist, coming right up.
john_strinlai 5mo ago
as someone who doesnt do web stuff, i found some humor in having no idea what "a11y" was, having to look it up, and finding out it is supposed to be "accessibility". my quick accessibility tip: introduce what your acronyms, initialisms, and numeronyms stand for at least once.
- jpc0 5mo ago
  a11y is pretty pervasive and well understood in the context around what is being discussed. I18n as well, you get to look that one up to because that makes you one of today's lucky 10000 https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

If agents is what it finally takes to get good a11y I'll take it. I'll bitch about it, but I'll take it.

by ctoth 5mo ago

If agents is what it finally takes to get good a11y I'll take it. I'll bitch about it, but I'll take it.

i think this goes both ways too :) agents have been a boon for everyone with disabilities, carpal tunnel, RSI, ADHD, anything and now the fact that interfaces need to be accessible to agents, not just humans, ironically increases it for humans in return

lopis 5mo ago
And lets not forget that not all disabilities are chronic. Many disabilities are situational or temporary. AI is a great assist for a hangover day for example...

tomjakubowski 5mo ago

Playwright, the end-to-end testing framework for the web, provides a strong incentive to give sites good a11y: Playwright tests are an absolute delight to read, write and maintain on properly accessible sites, when using the accessibility locators. Somewhat less so when using a soup of CSS selector and getByText()-style locators. One thing I am curious about is a hybrid approach where LLMs work in conjunction with vision models (and probes which can query/manipulate the DOM) to generate Playwright code which wraps browser access to the site in a local, programmable API. Then you'd have agents use that API to access the site rather than going through the vision agents for everything.

lsaferite 5mo ago
Using playwright-cli with Claude code is highly effective for debugging locally deployed web apps with essentially zero setup.
tyingq 5mo ago
Was looking for this comment. I'd like to see this approach in the comparison...having the LLM build a playwright script and use it. I suspect it would beat time-to-market for the api, and be close-ish in elapsed time per transaction. Harder to scale if it's doing a lot of them, I suppose.
giancarlostoro 5mo ago
This is precisely how the Playwright MCP works, which lets something like Claude directly test a website. https://playwright.dev/docs/getting-started-mcp#accessibility-snapshots https://playwright.dev/docs/getting-started-mcp#accessibilit... I've mentioned several times and gotten snarky remarks about how rewriting your code so it fits in your head, and in the LLM's context helps the LLM code better, to which people complain about rewriting code just for an LLM, not realizing that the suggestion is to follow better coding principles to let the LLM code better, which has the net benefit of letting humans code better! Well looks like, if you support accessibility in your web apps correctly, Playwright MCP will work correctly for you. Amazing.
phatskat 5mo ago
There is also Testing Library, which I’ve mostly seen and used for unit tests (vitest) and component tests (Storybook), that practically forces you into setting things up in an accessible way. The methods for finding elements are along the lines of “find by ARIA role” or “get by label” - in fact, querying the DOM with selectors is afaik either not a part of the library or very difficult to do because their focus is ensuring your app is actually accessible as part of your testing strategy.

pjc50 5mo ago

Very real risk of this going in reverse: people building inaccessible websites to prevent AI use.

stingraycharles 5mo ago
That’s such an extremely small niche of people it’s not a real risk.
blurbleblurble 5mo ago
"AI" is a made up hype thing. It's just computers and computer programs. For real!
solenoid0937 5mo ago
Those people probably aren't working on anything useful anyways, so its no big deal.
- 20k 5mo ago
  I've found that by far the most useful websites as a programmer are also the ones most resistant to AI. This would be a huge loss for anyone vision impaired
  - claytonjy 5mo ago
    What sorts of sites are you thinking of? To me, “most useful to a programmer” evokes docs and blogs and github issues and forum posts. I suppose some forums might be AI-resistant (login wall), but the others are trivially AI accessible.
    - irishcoffee 5mo ago
      GitHub is naturally LLM resistant via its new uptime feature… I’ll show myself out.
    - Rebelgecko 5mo ago
      Plenty of Linux-y websites use Anubis. Arch Wiki and IIRC some other distros too.

linkjuice4all 5mo ago

I mean…I guess. But this is ridiculous - how many layers does our technology need to bash through to update two records on remote systems? I get that value is being added at some point - but just charge some micropayment for transactions. This is just too much.

lazide 5mo ago
Ever read Vernor Vinge’s a deepness in the sky? Digital archeologist, coming right up.

john_strinlai 5mo ago

as someone who doesnt do web stuff, i found some humor in having no idea what "a11y" was, having to look it up, and finding out it is supposed to be "accessibility". my quick accessibility tip: introduce what your acronyms, initialisms, and numeronyms stand for at least once.

jpc0 5mo ago
a11y is pretty pervasive and well understood in the context around what is being discussed. I18n as well, you get to look that one up to because that makes you one of today's lucky 10000 https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/