My Request to Google on Accessibility

Hey, Alphabet or Google or Chrome or whomever in that illegal monopoly continues to release things to the web platform that are full of accessibility barriers, I have what I think is a straightforward request.

My Request

Please, if your team cannot explain how the thing satisfies all WCAG Success Criteria at Level AA, then don’t release the thing.

If the thing is a new feature for the web platform (HTML, CSS, ARIA, SVG, etc.), then don’t even propose the thing until you have its WCAG conformance sorted.

Then understand WCAG is the bare minimum, is only table stakes, and does not in itself guarantee the thing is accessible. Which means be prepared for the thing to still contain barriers that must be addressed before it goes any further. Which means you’ll field some questions.

Blowback

I’ll run with two examples lead by Google in the web platform standards world, one older and one recent.

1. Toasts

In 2019 I got involved in a Google-lead effort to create a toast element (sorta). I gave ARIA feedback, helped make the GitHub content more accessible, and challenged some assumptions (primarily what they called research). I commented on only three other issues. Those links cover the totality of my involvement.

The toast effort died on the vine, I believe because it wasn’t well-scoped. And I got blamed for it (for being negative, disingenuous) and apparently I also never apologized. I wrote about this experience in more detail at Scraping Burned Toast.

2. Carousels

In late 2024, doing an end-run around the HTML spec and the concept of separation of concerns, Google drove carousels in the CSS Working Group. Then accessibility experts got wind of it and weighed in (more than just the once), only to get no traction.

Instead, Chrome did a dog-n-pony show (with the requisite accessibility lies). Prominent voices promoted it, some wrongly cooed over its accessibility, but only one person took the time to actually try it — and found it wanting. She got sideways criticism for a 6,000-word post and the implication that accessibility experts didn’t do enough. Who could have predicted?

Book-ends

Both of these book-end five years of a consistent experience for me (15 years based on posts linked below). Accessibility experts and disabled users (and the wonderful overlap of both groups) are not consulted at the start. Not in the scoping, not in the research, and not even in traditional shift-left-but-not-left-enough design phase.

Instead, we stumble across these things. We raise alarms or concerns or questions and are seen as buzzkills. Fun police. Hindrance to progress. We flag barriers and are ignored or dismissed or even harassed. And when the project inevitably catches fire, despite claims accessibility is baked in or the assertion it’s only a beta, we are told we didn’t weigh in early enough. We didn’t donate enough time. We didn’t participate in whatever opaque process in our copious free time.

Of course, ableism makes it easy to forget that accessibility experts and disabled users are already under a constant DDoS attack for our attention, never mind dealing with a US federal government that wants us to go away. I know I said I’m good at being a party-pooper, but I don’t want to be. It’s draining. And frankly, Google, it’s your fault (though not yours alone).

A Brief and Select History of WTF

Lucy, labeled “megacorp,” teeing up a football, and shouting at Charlie Brown, who is labeled “accessibility practitioner,” his back turned, arms folded, and grumpy expression.
Image idea courtesy Eric Bailey.

Wrap-up

Do you work for the company that formerly claimed it wouldn’t do evil? It sucks if you take this as a personal attack. It’s not. Your employer is simply doing a terrible job of supporting you in your efforts to support disabled users. If you want to be angry or frustrated, be angry or frustrated at the multi-billion dollar company that keeps throwing up barriers instead of spending a negligible amount of money to get experts and users involved.

It’s a paycheck that puts food on the table. I get that. Take its money and do what you can.

If you work for not-Google, like, say, Apple or Microsoft or Meta or Adobe or whatever, don’t be smug. If I had the energy I could take all of your employers to task for similar, egregious violations of user trust.

I did this rant in only one thousand and seven words!

A man holding an egg labeled “accessibility;” pointing at a skillet labeled “megacorps;” the fried egg in the pan labeled “accessibility by megacorps;” a woman swinging the skillet through a rack of dishes where the broken dishes are labeled “accessibility practitioners.”
Stills from the original “This is your brain on drugs” 1980s anti-drug commercial with the final still from the Rachael Leigh Cook version.

More of where I’ve tracked when Google has broken, dismissed, or forgotten accessibility and users.

One Comment

Reply

Thank you, Adrian. Will share some more thoughts with you directly.

Mark Lasser; . Permalink

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