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Who doesn't love RACIs? When it comes to ensuring accessibility of your products, almost all roles in the team can contribute something.

The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative published a mapping of roles and responsibilities to WCAG Success Criteria.

It's still a “draft”, and feedback is welcomed, but it's been worked on for many years.

They've included:

• 6 role groups: Business, Author (Content), Design, Development, Testing, Admin
• a mapping to WCAG Success Criteria of who is primarily or secondarily responsible, and who can contribute
• what can everyone do? A list of tasks and who can do them
• a decision tree for defining your own responsibility mapping

More info on the project and its aims:
Accessibility Roles and Responsibilities Mapping (ARRM) | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C

In defense of technical writing:

If reading philosophy taught me something, it is that thought can be valuable in any form, provided it’s original. (…) Narrate your failures and your wins. Telling your day-to-day routine might reveal patterns or enlighten those who are new to the field.

(From: Technical writing has a depth issue - passo.uno)

When you use AI, you are probably benefiting from stolen material, explains Toby Walsh, who has been an AI researcher for 40+ years. He calls these tools the “greatest heist in human history”:

I am outraged at the tech companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta for training their AI models, such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Llama, on my copyrighted books without either my consent or offering me or Black Inc any compensation.

The tech companies claim this is “fair use”. I don’t see it this way. Last year, at the Sydney Writers’ festival, I called it the greatest heist in human history. All of human culture is being ingested into these AI models for the profit of a few technology companies.

(From: I have been an AI researcher for 40 years. What tech giants are doing to book publishing is akin to theft | Toby Walsh | The Guardian)

It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.

(From: AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism // New Socialist)

Good post (even if it falsely claims The Hague is the capital of The Netherlands).

Igalia got a grant to work towards shipping a new proposal to solve for cross root ARIA:

we’ll work on all the process to get the Reference Target proposal ready to be shipped in the web rendering engines

(From: Solving Cross-root ARIA Issues in Shadow DOM)

Christian shares how he used hidden=until-found to make hidden content findable via find in page:

This episode taught me the importance of accommodating diverse navigation patterns and highlighted (once more) how evolving standards can improve accessibility for everyone. But while hidden="until-found" is a good step forward, there's still work to be done to make find-in-page truly universal.

(From: Rethinking Find-in-Page Accessibility: Making Hidden Text Work for Everyone)

What can we do to make apps for real time collaboration, like Google Docs, more accessible?

This month, W3C published a new document called CTAUR (Collaboration Tools Accessibility User Requirements). Previous docs in this ‘series’ include XAUR (on XR), NAUR (on natural language interfaces like voice agents and chatbots), SAUR (on synchronisation in media, like that of captions and video) and RAUR (on RTC). The Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Working Group bas been busy in the last few years. Note, these are all non-normative.

CTAUR covers a number of aspects that go beyond WCAG:

• Real-time and asynchronous co-editing (including things like where are other people in the document currently)
• Annotation of content with comments
• Comparing revisions
• Suggested changes
• Access controls

For each, it describes users needs and corresponding requirements.

Why do the richest and powerful people on earth struggle to inform their decisions with basic ethics? Surely they could use their wealth and power against fascism instead of supporting it, it would show leadership.

Joe Steel says Tim Cook is failing us, and should be using the same skills he used to negotiate tax holidays to negotiate human dignity:

what I would like to see is Tim standing up for what he purports to believe in. Not speaking about things that have inspired him, or donating to charities as some kind of fascist-neutral offset, but devising a way to argue for the protection of human dignity for his customers and employees from this federal government. If he can transact a tax holiday, or tariff carve-outs, he can figure out what to wheel and deal to protect people. Many of whom are his employees and customers.

(From: Tim Cook Is Failing Us)

Matt Mullenweg is at it again:

Members of the fledgling WordPress Sustainability Team have been left reeling after WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg abruptly dissolved the team this week—an action prominent tech journalist Kara Swisher has described as “bizarrely heinous behavior.”

(From: Mullenweg Shuts Down WordPress Sustainability Team, Igniting Backlash - The Repository)

Dude shows once again he has too much power over too large of a project. Fershad Irani wrote that he likely never cared about sustainability anyway.

In Why should there be a WordPress Sustainability Group? Chris Adams explains open source CMSes should have a sustainability group for many reasons, including reducing risk:

If you expect people to use your product or service, you might be expected to help people responsible for compliance when using it now.

Accessibe fined 1 million dollars:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has fined accessiBe, a startup that claims to make websites more compatible with the screen readers blind people rely on to access the internet, for false advertising and compensating reviewers without disclosing that it sponsored the reviews.

In a proposed order, the FTC would require accessiBe to pay $1 million that may be used to refund the company’s customers, and prohibit accessiBe from overstating the capabilities of its tools. The order would also mandate that accessiBe “clearly and conspicuously” highlight connections to endorsers of its services.

(From: FTC orders AI accessibility startup accessiBe to pay $1M for misleading advertising | TechCrunch)