Pretty much exactly four years ago, I shared an article about 5 places to get started with Web Accessibility – and while much of that still holds, the web and the way we code have also changed quite a bit in the past 4 years. That’s why it’s time for an updated version.
What’s new in Web Accessibility?
The elephant in the room, at least if you are in the EU, is the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which came into effect in June 2025 and informs how web accessibility is regulated in the European Union. This directive covers a variety of products and services, including:
- computers and operating systems
- ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines
- smartphones
- TV equipment related to digital television services
- telephony services and related equipment
- access to audio-visual media services such as television broadcast and related consumer equipment
- services related to air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport
- banking services
- e-books
- e-commerce
While of course there have been laws about web accessibility in the EU before, this new directive led to slightly increased (media) attention on the topic and motivated some companies to look more closely at their accessibility processes.
We are still far from Web Accessibility being a code quality standard across the board, but there has been some uptick in awareness. Especially when working in frontend development, user experience design or quality assurance, learning about web accessibility is more important than ever (at least in my humble opinion).
What’s new in Web Development?
The other elephant in the room (it’s getting quite crowded in here ^^) is of course that since 2022, there’s been a dramatic increase in coding agents / agentic development / the use of AI in every step of the product development process. This development has its own implications for accessibility on the web – some good, some bad, some complicated.
While this definitely calls for its own article, here’s the tl;dr: Just because coding agents produce what they very confidently claim to be accessible code, you are well-advised to learn the basics to be able to verify their claims. LLMs are using the existing code as a baseline for their decisions, much of which, sadly, is inaccessible. That isn’t to say they can’t help fix accessibility bugs, use agent skills to guide developers, enforce standards, or make accessible suggestions. Just take them with a grain of salt.
So, how to get started with Web Accessibility in 2026?
Luckily, the most important things in Web Accessibility don’t change quite as often as other areas in web development. Assistive technology relies on semantic code, the rules of which remain fairly consistent. And while the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are continuously improved and adapted, this happens with much consideration and over time. WCAG 2.2 was published in 2023, and is the current recommended standard. WCAG 3.0 is currently being developed, but not expected to be the recommended standard in the near future.
Hands-on Accessibility Learning
That being said, depending on your preferred learning style, the theory and documentation behind it might not be the most digestible entry point. If you prefer to get into a new topic hands-on, I’d suggest the following:
Pick a random web page, maybe one you use a lot, and in the DevTools, run a Lighthouse accessibility audit (I’ve written an article about Accessibility testing with Chrome DevTools a while ago, if you’d like to learn more.
What results do you find? Explore the different issues, inspect the page, read up on the issues in more detail in the linked documentation. What are the recommended manual checks? Can you tab through the page with your tab key? Do you see visual focus? When you inspect the DOM, what is the semantic structure like and what happens if you toggle the Accessibility Tree?
Diving deeper and exploring accessibility problems ‘in the wild’ might be an educational experience and more memorable than going straight for the documentation.
Needless to say, automatic accessibility testing is just a starting point. You will always have to familiarize yourself with manual accessibility testing as well. But it’s a great place to get started.
Accessibility Standards and rules:
Of course, the basics still hold:
- As an internationally shared standard, the WCAG is still the most reliable source of documentation for accessibility requirements and success criteria. It might also be worth checking What’s new in WCAG 2.2
- The WebAIM One Million report documents each year on the most common accessibility issues on the one million most popular websites and gives really great insights into structural problems
If you are looking for a more structured learning experience,
- the A11y Collective has a lot of great and affordable courses from the basics to more advanced accessibility topics
- Google Chrome’s web.dev blog also features a set of articles focussed on Accessibility (free)
- MDN has a core learning module called “What is Web Accessibility?”
Accessibility Talks & Tutorials
Many conferences publish their talk recordings, which are another great resource for learning about Web Accessibility. AxeCon is an accessibility focussed virtual conference held once a year by Deque, and on their YouTube Channel, you can find recordings from past years.
Books about Accessibility
Recently, the amazing Vitaly Friedman shared a list of free accessibility books, among others Accessibility for Everyone, by Laura Kalbag and “Giving a Damn about Accessibility” by Sheri Byrne-Haber.
There is also the very practical Web Accessibility Cookbook by Manuel Matuzović.
Communities, Newsletters & People to follow
Following like-minded accessibility enthusiasts on a platform of your choosing, signing up for newsletters to stay in the loop or joining virtual communities can be a great way to stay up-to-date and learn from each other. Here are a few of my favorites:
- A11y Slack community: Massive Slack community of accessibility practitioners, experts and learners from around the world. Great place to connect, follow recent conversations and dive deeper into different topics around accessibility
- The Accessibility Weekly is an amazing newsletter by David A. Kennedy bringing accessibility insights straight to your inbox once a week
- The wonderful Laura Wissiak publishes A11y News on Substack
- Hidde de Vries has an amazing blog and shares a lot about updates to web standards, digital accessibility and tech ethics
- Over time, I’ve organically started following mostly accessibility practitioners on online networks, so my feed consists of a lot of industry news, articles and updates by like-minded folks working in the field. I’ve found this super helpful 🙂
Conclusion
There are a lot of different entry points into learning about Web Accessibility in 2026 – which one works best for you will depend a lot on your previous experiences, areas of interest and learning style. But you’ve already taken the first and most important step: You are curious and would like to learn more 💛
What resources helped you get started? How do you prefer to learn about a new topic? I’d love to hear your thoughts and what helped you on your journey.
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