The Accessibility Breakdown

Digital accessibility is about more than a pass-or-fail label. In this episode of Accessibility Breakdown, Mark Miller and Justin Stockton explore YouTube Playables accessibility tags, ADA website accessibility lawsuits targeting dental practices, and GitHub accessibility statements. They discuss how clearer information about accessibility features and limitations can help people choose games, evaluate software, and understand where improvement is still needed.

The conversation connects accessible gaming, dental website access, and open-source development through a shared theme: transparency and continuous improvement. Mark and Justin examine barriers in online patient forms and PDFs, discuss the legal questions raised by website accessibility litigation, and explain why project-specific accessibility statements matter. They also weigh automated testing against manual audits and user testing, using a component-library example to show how unresolved accessibility issues can become accessibility debt.

Why does the excitement of starting in digital accessibility sometimes give way to frustration? Mark Miller and Justin Stockton explore Alastair Campbell’s accessibility hype cycle, discussing realistic expectations, recurring setbacks, and the small improvements that make the work worthwhile. They also unpack Sheri Byrne-Haber’s post about press-and-hold CAPTCHA barriers, questioning what happens when bot prevention blocks people using assistive technology or AI agents.

Turning to Jeff Adams’s article on auto-captions and transcripts, the hosts examine why AI-generated text still needs human editing. They discuss correcting names and accessibility terminology, preserving conversational personality, and capturing meaningful information that automated transcription can miss. Along the way, they reflect on their own podcast workflow and the balance between readable transcripts, accurate meaning, and a sustainable publishing schedule.

In this episode of Accessibility Breakdown, Mark Miller and Justin Stockton explore screen reader preferences, accessibility bug bounties, and the barriers created by blocking personal AI agents. Their discussion of WebAIM’s Screen Reader User Survey #11 examines JAWS’ continued popularity, perceptions of free and low-cost alternatives, and how familiarity and everyday workflows influence assistive technology choices.

The hosts then consider Chris Yoong’s proposal for accessibility bug bounties, weighing the potential for ongoing user feedback against challenges in defining and validating issues. Finally, Taylor Arndt’s article sparks a conversation about Amazon’s AI agent restrictions, the importance of using personally configured tools, and why accessibility perspectives need to be included when companies make policies that affect digital access.

Mark Miller, Justin Stockton, and guest Keith Casebonne examine how accessibility and artificial intelligence increasingly affect one another. They discuss AudioEye research showing that inaccessible websites can sharply reduce AI-agent task completion while increasing token use and energy demands, then connect those findings to Michael Taylor’s account of navigating the web with a screen reader. Taylor’s resourceful workarounds illustrate the potential of AI and emerging assistive technologies, but the group emphasizes that individual ingenuity cannot substitute for accessible design.

The conversation closes with concerns about proposals to automate accessibility testing for the U.S. Web Design System. The hosts argue that today’s AI cannot fully assess human experience and may reproduce existing accessibility failures, creating new technical debt across critical government services. Their broader conclusion is that AI should remain a carefully managed tool within a human-first accessibility process, not a replacement for expert review, authentic user testing, or the responsibility to build inclusive digital experiences.

This episode examines three timely questions at the intersection of UX, accessibility, and AI: why AI prototyping ranks highly among UX methods, how the Dunning-Kruger effect can create misplaced confidence in accessibility work, and why fully automating accessibility testing remains unlikely. Mark Miller and Justin Stockton emphasize early testing with people with disabilities, healthy skepticism about automated results, and the continuing importance of human experience as technology evolves.

This episode examines three timely questions at the intersection of UX, accessibility, and AI: why AI prototyping ranks highly among UX methods, how the Dunning-Kruger effect can create misplaced confidence in accessibility work, and why fully automating accessibility testing remains unlikely. Mark Miller and Justin Stockton emphasize early testing with people with disabilities, healthy skepticism about automated results, and the continuing importance of human experience as technology evolves.

Mark Miller and Justin Stockton break down three accessibility pieces that connect the dots between litigation trends, organizational staffing, and the practical politics of sharing conformance information. The conversation matters because it shows how accessibility failures are still showing up at scale, why one accessibility hire is rarely enough, and why VPATs and accessibility statements are as much about trust as they are about compliance.

Mark Miller is joined by Justin Stockton and guest Steve Faulkner for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on AI-assisted legal research, sign language translation technology, and a browser-based music tool built with accessibility in mind. The discussion is part analysis, part industry reflection, with each speaker bringing a distinct perspective shaped by years of accessibility work. We discuss how AI can help surface disability-related changes in U.S. federal regulations, why local knowledge still matters when evaluating AI output, and what it means to build creative tools on the web without losing accessibility. The episode also explores the limits of expertise, the value of lived experience, and why large companies may be the ones able to tackle certain accessibility challenges at scale.

Mark Miller, Justin Stockton, and Stephen Cutchins from Cvent discuss three accessibility stories that all point to the same lesson: accessibility is not just a compliance issue; it is a trust, revenue, and experience issue. Stephen brings deep event-industry perspective from Cvent, while Justin adds practical examples from meetup and concert access, and Mark ties it together with the larger business and culture impact.

Mark Miller, Justin Stockton, and guest Pete from Onward Accessibility break down three accessibility articles that each take a very different angle on the same question: who benefits when accessibility is treated as a business, technical, or political problem. They dig into game theory in procurement, the limits of building for AI instead of people, and the ethical tensions around Meta donating smart glasses in Ireland.