The accessibility problem isn’t design. It’s engineering.
Accessibility failures aren't design oversights - they're engineering failures. The full-stack hiring trend, AI-generated code with no context, and a compliance-first mentality have combined to create a crisis hiding in plain sight. Here's what's actually going wrong, and what fixing it actually looks like.
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← Journal The Accessibility Problem Isn't Design. It's Engineering. Chris Gibbons · 23rd March 2026 · 7 min read Audits get run. Boxes get ticked. Statements get published in footers. And then most teams move on. Nine months after the EAA deadline, it's worth asking what actually changed. accessibility The European Accessibility Act came into force on 28 June 2025. Teams audited their components, ran Axe, added ARIA attributes, and ticked boxes. Compliance documents were written. Statements were published in footers. And then most of them moved on. Nine months later, it’s worth asking what actually changed. Accessibility isn’t a design problem with a checklist solution. It never was. The specs were written, the components annotated, the guidelines documented.
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