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Accessibility Industry Update: March 2026

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Hey there, and welcome back! This edition marks two years since we started publishing monthly updates covering everything new and noteworthy in the accessibility space. For those who have been with us since day one, we can’t thank you enough. For those just finding this newsletter, we hope it is valuable to you.

It has been a packed month. axe-con wrapped up at the end of February, CSUN’s 41st Assistive Technology Conference ran March 9 through 13 in Anaheim, more benchmarks surfaced on the efficacy of AI code generation for accessibility, and the fight over the ADA Title II web accessibility rule took a serious turn. On top of all that, a federal report revealed just how far the government’s own technology falls short on accessibility, and the community said farewell to one of its most influential leaders. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it.

As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these accessibility updates via email.

Contents:

Upcoming Conferences
and Events

  • Business Without Barriers Summit at Naidex: March 25-26, 2026, NEC, Birmingham, UK. Two days of free content and expert-led sessions on accessibility and inclusion for businesses of all sizes.
  • W4A 2026 (Web for All Conference): April 13-14, 2026, Dubai, UAE. The annual ACM conference on web accessibility research and practice.
  • Abilities Expo: March 27-29, 2026 (Los Angeles) and May 1-3, 2026 (New York Metro). A leading, free, multi-city event series in the United States designed to help people with disabilities, their families, caregivers, seniors, and healthcare professionals discover new products and services aimed at enhancing independence and improving quality of life.
  • Microsoft Ability Summit: May 19-20, 2026, Redmond, WA (in-person and online). The 16th annual Ability Summit focuses on how agentic AI continues to empower people with disabilities. Registration is open.
  • Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD): May 21, 2026. The 15th annual GAAD. A day to think, talk, learn, and do something about digital accessibility.

Conference Season is Upon Us

This was a big month for the accessibility world with axe-con, TechAccess Oklahoma, and CSUN all landed within weeks of each other. Here are some of the highlights.

CSUN Assistive Technology Conference (March 9-13, Anaheim)

The 41st annual CSUN AT Conference drew attendees from across the globe to Anaheim. We enjoyed the opportunity to meet many of you there this year, and we learned a lot. We will be publishing a post talking about everything we learned soon, but for now, here were a few of the standouts.

In a CSUN highlights post, Be My Eyes, a free app that connects blind users with volunteers or AI assistance, shared that their platform now has 1 million blind users and 10 million sighted volunteers. They also announced the launch of the Be My Eyes Foundation, a new nonprofit with a mission to ensure that people who are blind or have low vision will always have free access to accessibility technology regardless of where they live or their ability to pay.

On the product side, LG Electronics debuted a height-adjustable kiosk co-developed with braille specialist Dot Inc., featuring a braille panel, sign-language video guidance, and a built-in screen reader. They also showed off a new IOT sensor with visual alerts that converts appliance sounds such as door-open alerts into light-based notifications.

Sony Electronics showcased its “Accessibility for All” lineup including BRAVIA TVs with TalkBack and text magnification, Alpha cameras with screen reader support, enlarged displays for visually impaired photographers, retail displays that incorporate braille and audio descriptions, and its aibo companion robot.

HumanWare and Vispero announced a partnership that bundles a free six-month JAWS subscription with every BrailleNote Evolve, with HumanWare now managing global JAWS distribution for the device. This new device was a matter of much excitement, as it is the first widely available braille-based computer to feature a modern processor and 32GB ram.

Separately, Vispero expanded availability of its AI-powered Page Explorer feature to JAWS Home Annual subscribers, and Orbit Research unveiled next-generation Strata and Flow braille displays.

One of the more moving pieces to come out of CSUN was the MIDI Association’s conference report. They shared the story of Andrii, a Ukrainian veteran who lost both arms and his sight on the battlefield about a year ago. He found music again through MIDI instruments (specifically the DM48X MIDI controller harmonica) and came to the CSUN booth to share his experience. MIDI.org also covered the world premiere of Amenote’s AptiPlay, a MIDI 2.0 music controller designed to make music creation accessible to people with limited mobility, launching Q3 2026.

One session that particularly stood out was Karl Groves’ vibe coding accessibility experiment. The setup is straightforward: take nine major AI coding tools and give each one the same task (build an online pizza ordering form). Two prompts are used. One explicitly mentions accessibility, one does not. Each prompt runs with isolated context so results don’t influence each other. Finally, perform automated and manual testing on both sets of output. The key takeaway here was that if you don’t prompt for accessibility, you won’t get it. To learn more or run the experiment yourself, the full set of prompts and results have been posted in a GitHub repository.

In a write-up from his talk, Michael Fairchild from Microsoft shared results from a broader benchmarking effort using the a11y-llm-eval tool. The picture is not great. GPT 5.2 leads the pack at just 41% passing, while most other models (including Claude, Gemini, and Grok) score at or near zero. The fundamental problem is that these models are trained on the internet, and roughly 95% of websites have accessibility issues. Like most humans, without a reminder, accessibility is typically an afterthought. It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Custom instructions make a dramatic difference. Even a minimal addition like “All output MUST be accessible” yielded an 18 percentage point improvement, while detailed expert-level guidance pushed some models from near-zero to over 90%.

If you get one thing from both of these sessions, make it an action item to take a few minutes to check on the AI prompts and workflows that your team might be using, and at least add a suggestion to consider accessibility.

axe-con 2026 (February 24-25, Virtual)

Deque’s annual conference drew attendees from nearly 100 countries. Haben Girma (a widely cited voice after being the first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School) delivered quite the quotable keynote. “Technology has opened so many doors. Deafblindness is not my barrier. My biggest barrier is ableism.”

Meta’s Jesse Beach revealed that their AI-powered accessibility tool achieved a 90% solve rate for accessibility label issues, landing over 2,500 fixes with 5,000 more queued. Work that would have taken months at best was instead completed in weeks.

Preety Kumar (Deque CEO) outlined a three-pillar accessibility strategy: get leadership buy-in, equip your teams with the right tools and training, and get a baseline of where you stand.

Anna Cook explored what “accessibility in the end of deterministic design” looks like as AI-generated interfaces become more common.

Deque also announced that its Axe MCP Server is now included in Axe DevTools for Web, which combines AI-powered analysis with remediation guidance directly in developer workflows.

Each session is available on-demand, all you have to do is retroactively register for free.

Our Thoughts

If there was one theme that cut across both conferences, it was AI’s dual role in accessibility (anyone surprised?). Meta is deploying AI to fix accessibility issues at scale. AI coding tools are generating inaccessible code by default. Meanwhile, WebAIM is envisioning a future where AI serves as a personalized Intelligent Digital Accessibility Assistant. Benchmarking data shows that the difference between accessible and inaccessible AI output begins with a single sentence in a prompt.

RED ALERT: The ADA Title II Web Accessibility Rule Is in Danger

If you care (or let’s face it, been forced to care) about the ADA title II regulation for state and local governments, there is a good chance that the Converge Accessibility RED ALERT is the most important accessibility piece you will read this month. The DOJ submitted the ADA Title II web accessibility rule as an Interim Final Rule (IFR), which is currently under review at OIRA (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). In contrast to a Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), an IFR takes effect immediately upon publication and bypasses the standard public comment period. The short is that there is a small chance that the title II final rule could be postponed or go away for some time, but it’s complicated.

An executive order signed in January 2025 (EO 14192) requires every government agency to repeal at least ten existing regulations for each new regulation proposed in 2025 and thereafter, as a strategy for reducing spend and alleviating “unnecessary regulatory burdens” on the American economy. In response, the National Federation of the Blind quickly submitted a letter to the office of information and regulatory affairs opposing any changes, arguing that the rule reflects 14 years of consideration and that covered entities have had 36 years to prepare for a requirement that has existed for fifty years. The NFB isn’t the only one. The National League of Cities has been collecting compliance cost data for a presentation to OIRA, and Lainey Feingold published an article on how to tell the federal government not to change the regulation.

It is our belief that the title II rule will continue to stand, irrespective of the IFR. Assuming it does get overturned, there has been enough interest and investment that it will undoubtedly be contested in court.

When thinking about the efforts to roll back these requirements, a 2023 post from Jim Nielsen, published prior to the formation of this newsletter, is worth revisiting. He reminds us that “1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.” Most of us are just temporarily abled. This legislation may not matter to you right now, but there is a good chance it will matter to you or someone you love in the future. With around 35 days before the April 24 deadline and the rule still legally in effect, this is not a time to hit the brakes.

Other Legal Developments

The Converge Accessibility February 2026 legal update covered several notable developments.

In the Prince Street Pizza case (S.D. Florida), the court dismissed the complaint for lack of nexus between the issues on the website and the plaintiff’s intent to return to the physical location. This is consistent with the precedent set by the Winn-Dixie decision.

New Mexico introduced HB 295 (the Accessibility Act), which would require state agencies to meet WCAG 2.1 AA by April 2027 and create an Office of Accessibility. This is substantially similar to HB 120, which passed the legislature in 2025 but was vetoed by the governor.

California and Georgia introduced separate bills targeting lawsuits asserting an access violation for the primary purpose of obtaining a payment from the defendant. These follow Utah’s SB 68 and the proposed Protecting Small Businesses from Predatory Website Lawsuits Act on the federal level.

Nearly 30 years after Section 508 became law, the government still can’t meet its own standard. A report by the general services administration found that the federal government’s own technology scores an average of 1.96 out of 5 on a 5-point scale when it comes to accessibility. Put another way, less than forty percent of the U.S. government’s most viewed webpages are fully accessible. Of those, forty-three agencies didn’t even respond to the assessment. Roughly half of agencies don’t routinely test their technology for accessibility, and usability testing with people with disabilities is described as “rare.” The report recommends using procurement as leverage, verifying vendor accessibility claims, and enforcing contract requirements.

On a related note, a new report from researchers at Binghamton University, CSU Sacramento, and UW-Madison, published jointly by DREDF and AAPD, documents how government restructuring efforts are creating significant new barriers for Americans applying for or maintaining disability benefits. Over 7,000 SSA workers were laid off in 2025, and the resulting administrative overhauls are straining the system for the people who depend on it most.

The WCAG 3.0 Working Draft received a March 2026 update from the Web Accessibility Initiative at the W3C, with changes to structure and terminology, new sections on best practices and conformance, and progress on the Bronze/Silver/Gold conformance model that will replace A/AA/AAA. While it’s still years out and not something most organizations need to be thinking about at this point, there’s a good opportunity to comment and be part of the conversation if such a thing interests you.

What We’ve Been Reading

Jobs and Opportunities

Looking for more opportunities? Check out A11yJobs, Indeed, and LinkedIn.

QualityLogic does not explicitly endorse these companies. Should you decide to seek a position with one of them, please perform your own due diligence.

That’s a wrap for this month. As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these accessibility updates via email.

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