Using agents? Your software should be accessible

I attended Rebase a few weeks ago, and got the opportunity to lead a discussion alongside the internet’s Zach Holman, who was staffer #1 at GitHub (although somehow I have a lower GitHub User ID than him). The topic was: building software fast.

I really wanted the topic to be building fast software, but that’s another day’s story (quite often the two go hand in hand).

The hosting task was to encourage discussion, and so I tried to ensure everyone in the room got to speak at least once. The main demographic in the room was mostly white, Irish, male, startup-founder. We still have work to do on representation.

At one point, I can't remember responding to what prompt, one of the lads in the room chimed up with the worrying statistic that with the rise of AI-generated software, acessibility is getting worse.

This gave me an idea. "Show of hands. How many of you have in your AGENTS.md or your CLAUDE.md something about adhering to an accessibility standard?"

Crickets. A smattering of hands.

To the chap who made the point, I asked: "What should anyone who doesn't have something about accessibility in their AGENTS.md feel?"

"Shame"

Shame is right.

I get it: I am also a white, Irish, male startup-founder, and while over the years I have wanted to say "we care about accessibility" (My parents taught disabled kids: I care!)... I didn't always take the time to prioritise it over the million and one other things customers were shouting at me for.

There is no longer any excuse for this. To the room, I offered this:

If you take nothing else away from this session, take this: go to your AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md or whatever and add this line:

Ensure that this app is WCAG 2.2 AA audit-ready and stays that way

Ensure that this app is WCAG 2.2 AA audit-ready and stays that way.

One line in your stupid file and you’ll be taking steps to making the internet more inclusive.

There’s a kicker to this. The most AI-driveable OS in the world right now is MacOS, because Apple has prioritised Accessibility like nobody else over the years. By caring about accessiblity, you open your app up to the 16% of people worldwide who have a disability, and chances are you make your app better for another significant percentage who don't. But you know what else benefits from accessible software? Agents. And presumably if you’re using agents, you also want your software to be usable by agents and people who use them. There’s also a legal imperative in many cases.

After I challenged the room, Zach pulled out his phone and said "I'm doing that right now". The next day, he texted me a picture from one of his agent sessions showing that it had found a bunch of failures and it was adding a rule to CI to ensure that the app remained accessible once the failures had been solved. Things like axe exist just for this.

If I achieve nothing from this blog other than a handful of folks improving their slopware just a little bit by adding an accessibility standard to their agent instructions, then it will have been worth it.

Remember too though that this will only get you audit-ready from a machine perspective. Remember also to hire a disabled person to actually get you certified, and budget an annual or bi-annual review.

The fact that accessibility is getting worse when it’s machines producing the code ought to be an embarrasment to us all, given how simple it is to solve when it’s machines producing the code. There’s no longer any excuse.