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Accessibility Industry Update: October 2026

Home » Newsletters » Accessibility Industry Update: October 2026

From the Desk of the Editor

October has brought cooler weather, conference season, and enough accessibility reading to keep us occupied well past Halloween. This month, we’re looking closely at the results of WebAIM’s 11th Screen Reader User Survey, covering new insights on AI-powered accessibility testing, and discussing a new Hawaii law that extends digital accessibility requirements to businesses open to the public. We also have a thoughtful debate about the limits of automated testing, a new open-source component library, and several new job opportunities.

Standing Notes

If you are new here, welcome. We compile this update every month to keep you informed on the changing landscape of digital accessibility. Whether you are a developer, product manager, QA specialist, leader, or somewhere in between, we want to give you the context you need to stay in the know.

As always, reach out if you think we 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.

– The QualityLogic Editorial Team

What’s Inside

Axe-con 2027 Registration Is Now Open!

Registration is now open for Axe-con 2027. Axe-con is a free virtual conference for developers, designers, business leaders, and accessibility professionals. Deque describes it as the world’s largest digital accessibility event, reporting that around 35,000 people from 12,000 organizations attended last year.

The conference will take place February 23 and 24, 2027. The program will span four tracks: development, design, organizational success, and wildcard tracks. Every session will include live captions and American Sign Language interpretation. You can register for free here.

What WebAIM’s Latest Screen Reader Survey Tells Us

In July and August 2026, WebAIM surveyed preferences of screen reader users for the 11th time. The Screen Reader User Survey #11 results include 1,780 valid responses and follow ten previous surveys conducted between 2009 and 2024.

After reading through the report, these were the statistics that we thought were the most surprising and informative:

  • Internet proficiency: Respondents without disabilities were more likely to rate their internet skills as “Advanced” (87%) than respondents with disabilities (63%).
  • JAWS resurgence: JAWS regained ground as the most common primary desktop screen reader, rising to 55% from 41% in 2024, while NVDA and VoiceOver both slipped.
  • Regional usage: Location shapes the tools people use. JAWS led NVDA by a wide margin in North America (72.5% vs. 15.6%) and Australia. The two were nearly tied in Europe and NVDA dominated in Africa/Middle East, Asia, and South America.
  • Screen reader proficiency: Here the pattern flips. Among respondents with disabilities 60% rated themselves as “Advanced” screen readers, compared to just 18.3% of respondents without disabilities.
  • macOS: Mac use was rare overall (6.3%), but respondents without disabilities were more than four times as likely to use one as respondents with disabilities.
  • Browser combinations: JAWS with Chrome was the clear leader at 31.2%, but usage spread across many combinations, including NVDA with Chrome (17.3%), JAWS with Edge (17%), and NVDA with Firefox (9.1%).
  • Mobile use: Nearly 92% of respondents use a screen reader on a mobile device, and iOS remains the platform of choice for 74% of respondents with disabilities.
  • iOS and proficiency: The more advanced a respondent’s screen reader and internet skills the more likely they were to use iOS.
  • Apps vs websites: For tasks like banking or shopping, respondents with disabilities leaned toward mobile apps (55.3%) more than respondents without disabilities did (44.8%).
  • Perceived progress: Confidence that the web is getting more accessible has slipped with each survey since 2021. Respondents without disabilities were more optimistic (41% saw improvement) than those with disabilities (31.8%).

Our Thoughts

The survey continues to be useful because it is the closest thing we have to a large-scale measurement of what assistive software people are using in the wild, and how well they feel it is meeting their needs. It resists the idea that there is one representative setup. A common trap that we have seen is organizations settling on one screen reader, one way to test magnification, etc., and then coming away confused when they get a customer complaint.

There also remains a wide gap in the perceptions of accessibility between people who have disabilities who use the stuff every day, and the people who write or test the code before release.

Consider these two findings:

  • People who use screen readers because of a disability reported much greater screen reader proficiency, yet lower general internet proficiency.
  • Respondents without disabilities were far more likely to use Android and macOS.

You can look at these through the lens of the systemic issues, but most of us aren’t in a place to impact digital literacy or operating system functionality at scale. What we can do, however, is increase the emphasis that we place on understanding the viewpoints of the end user and letting this inform testing strategy. The habits of practitioners who use a screen reader for testing may differ considerably from those of people who depend on one throughout the day, which is just one reason that we at QualityLogic are so bullish on user testing.

All this having been said, there are limits on what we should conclude. WebAIM themselves note that the sample was not controlled and may not represent all screen reader users. Regional response counts varied widely, and self-reported proficiency is subjective. However, the results can and should inform testing priorities and the consideration we give to customer engagement.

Hawaii has enacted one of the clearest state laws addressing digital accessibility in places of public accommodation. Act 257, signed on July 14, makes it a discriminatory practice to deny a person with a disability full and equal access to goods, services, facilities, or related information by requiring them to use inaccessible information and communication technology. In practical terms, businesses and other places open to the public can be held accountable under Hawaii civil rights law when their websites, apps, social media, or other digital tools prevent equal access. This is huge, because Hawaii is the first state to seriously consider holding all private businesses to WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

The law directs the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission to write the technical standards, deadlines, and enforcement procedures. The commission’s proposed digital accessibility rules follow the framework of the Department of Justice’s Title II web accessibility rule in that larger organizations would have 24 months to comply after the rules are adopted, and smaller organizations would have 36 months. The employee threshold, timelines, and other details are still just proposals for now. However, we look forward to seeing where this goes and will be watching it closely.

Public comments are open through October 30, 2026.

A federal court in Texas struck down one part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ updated Section 504 regulation nationwide. The section at issue concerned where people with disabilities receive health and social services. It required organizations receiving HHS funding to provide those services in settings that allow people with disabilities to interact with people without disabilities as much as is appropriate for their needs. In plain language, the rule was intended to prevent people from being unnecessarily separated from their communities.

The Department of Justice and HHS chose not to defend that part of the regulation, so the court removed it. The ruling did not erase the entire Section 504 regulation. In particular, it did not remove the requirements for accessible websites and mobile apps. Those requirements still apply to organizations covered by the HHS rule.

This is a narrow ruling with serious consequences for community-based services, but it does not change the immediate digital accessibility responsibilities of hospitals, health plans, social service providers, and other organizations that receive HHS funding. Converge also notes that separate protections under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act may rest on a stronger legal foundation because Congress directed the Justice Department to keep its Title II rules consistent with earlier Section 504 regulations.

What We’ve Been Reading

  • Introducing the Accessible Components Library – TetraLogical: TetraLogical has released a library of open-source components. There are currently eight, with more to come. Each component has code, accessibility requirements, test scenarios, automated tests, and assistive technology notes. The team is clear that this is an opinionated library more than a production-ready design system. So even if you don’t end up using these components, the information may be useful on its own.
  • AI Agents Don’t Live with Disabilities. People Do – Salesforce: This article argues that accessible AI products begin with disability research and clear requirements, then need layered testing with automation, keyboards, screen readers, and real assistive technology users. It is a concise counterweight to the assumption that an intelligent product will somehow infer accessibility on its own.
  • Using AI as Your Accessibility Testing Partner – Ricky Onsman: Onsman treats AI as a junior partner for accessibility auditors, useful for exploring edge cases, checking work, and reducing administrative effort, but never as a replacement for expertise or testing with people with disabilities. The auditor remains responsible for the accuracy of the final report.
  • Automating All Accessibility Testing Is a Pipe Dream – Nicolas Steenhout: Like Onsman, Steenhout responds to plans for expanded automated testing in the U.S. Web Design System. His central point is that a machine can verify that an event occurred, but it cannot reliably judge whether a person understood an interaction or completed a task without unreasonable effort.
  • The Dunning-Kruger Effect in Accessibility – Craig Abbott: Accessibility failures often produce little feedback because blocked users usually just leave. Abbott explains how this silence can make individuals and organizations overestimate their maturity and does a great job of pinpointing where organizations often go wrong in their accessibility journey.
  • The Web Needs Interactive Lists – Sarah Higley: Higley makes the case for an interactive list pattern that behaves more like a native application control while retaining useful web semantics. The examples cover application navigation, chat messages, carousels, and file browsers.
  • The Blind Birdwatcher – Kottke.org: This one is not really about digital accessibility. It offers a glimpse into how people adapt hobbies and make unique discoveries through characteristics that others may call impairments. Juan Pablo Culasso, a Uruguayan birder who was born blind, has recorded bird songs for more than two decades and can distinguish more than 700 species by sound.
  • Foldable Phones and Accessibility: Benefits, Barriers, Weight, Care, and Cost – Sheri Byrne-Haber: Foldables can offer more room for magnification and augmentative communication, along with useful hands-free positions. They can also introduce problems involving dexterity, layout changes, lost screen reader focus, weight, repair, and price. Byrne-Haber provides practical checks for buyers as well as testing advice for app and website teams.
  • We Need to Change the Way We Talk About Digital Accessibility – Route Fifty: Marin County shifted its attention from fixing everything at once to prioritizing the government service pages with the greatest effect on residents. The result is a useful public-sector case for treating conformance as a baseline and usability as the outcome.
  • Twenty Years Later: Measuring the Accessibility of the U.S. State Government Websites – Tanya Goette and Sean Lynch: This academic study revisits research from 2005 by testing all 50 state homepages and the District of Columbia.

Jobs and Opportunities

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

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

Thanks for Reading!

That’s a wrap for this month.