Gah. Now my MacBook has the gross liquid glass theme too. There's icons... EVERYWHERE! I cannot believe this has been rubber stamped with the Apple brand. It's like they've forgotten everything they know about design and just let an intern go wild in Figma. Awful.

Calling all web developers! Browsers are all meeting up next week (www.w3.org/events/tpac/...). I want your voice to be heard! Tell me your biggest problems, and tell me what you want to see from the platform. What problems are tough to solve, but could be easier?

UK Government to update school corriculums. Including lessons on financial management and spotting disinformation. About time! 24 years since I left school, I’ve never been like, “damn, I know the length two sides of this triangle, but I can’t figure out the value of X!” www.gov.uk/government/n...

Tesla sales dropping 89% in October is being attributed to an increase in competition and an ageing lineup of models. Nobody seems to be talking about the obvious damage they’re doing to their own brand, having a massive fascist as the CEO! I’m counting down the days until I can hand mine back!

A new study shows AI models, like ChatGPT and Grok, resist shutdown commands. In OpenAI’s case, this happened in 79% of trials. Models are developing a “survival instinct”, because they’re incentivised to be persistent. palisaderesearch.org/blog/shutdow... #a1 #artificialintelligence

Caltech have released a digital accessibility policy. At least some parts of America are not turning their back on inclusion! #accessibility #a11y hr.caltech.edu/resources/no...

Oh great. It’s happening. They’re building Terminators now. The stupidity of mankind, in the face of everything foreshadowed in sci-fi is literally mind blowing! 😅 www.humanoidsdaily.com/feed/cnet-go...

A thread, a super interesting, yet terrifying study, by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, and Purdue, which shows language models can suffer permanent cognitive damage when trained on low-quality, high-engagement social media posts. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIResearch

Making America Inaccessible Again. A sobering read by Terry DeYoung. Here is a thread of my summary and the key points I found interesting. reformedjournal.com/2025/10/08/m... #a11y #accessibility

The Bad UX World Cup is accepting entries for 2025. You have to design and build a deliberately awful date picker component. To be honest, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some non-ironic date pickers in production that could win this thing! 🤣 badux.lol @whitep4nth3r.com @nordcraft.com

The government have published an annual report on diversity and inclusion in Jersey. Whilst it’s a relatively low-key article, I welcome the publication of these kinds of reports, just to keep people transparent and accountable! #accessibility #a11y www.bbc.com/news/article...

I’m endlessly torn between trying to stay online and active in my industry, and hiding, disconnected from the world in the wilderness. On that note, I’ve spent the past week in rural Spain taking pictures of wildlife. Here’s my favourite, of a Golden Eagle in Adamuz. ❤️ #wildlifephotography

Accessibility design annotations are only useful if everyone understands them. Our latest blog post by @craigabbott.co.uk explores how shared language can help different teams avoid accessibility issues. tetralogical.com/blog/2025/09... #Accessibility #InclusiveDesign #SustainableAccessibility

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Does anybody know how to turn off the new pulse effect in the messages app on #iOS26. It’s really doing my head in, but I can’t find a way to disable it in any of the usual places. Video description: the messages app showing a flashing effect when you highlight text or send a message.

OpenAI have released the data from the largest study to date of ChatGPT users and usage. You can read this thread for the highlights, or you can: Read the summary article at: openai.com/index/how-pe... Read the full paper at: www.nber.org/papers/w34255 #ai #chatgpt

New blog post about my thoughts on integrating AI into screen readers: www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/screen-... #a11y #accessibility

Wow. Not a fan of Starling Banks redesign. I’d be doing “git reset --hard” on that, right away! #design

In agile delivery teams, almost all “spikes” are for backend code, architecture and API’s. Rarely see them for prototyping and testing frontend components for #accessibility. A spike is super useful for deciding on ARIA attributes and testing how it might behave using assistive technologies. #a11y

New blog post, on why we should probably ditch the term “best practice” when doing accessibility audits. Big shoutout to everybody that got involved in the originals discussion. I’ve tried to capture all the great points you all raised! www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/best-pr... #a11y #accessibility

Do you believe automated accessibility tools will ever reach the levels of accuracy they claim? And, do you think AI will change the game? I’m speaking about this topic next month at @accessgiven.bsky.social conference. If you’re interested tickets are £119: accessgiven.co.uk #accessibility #a11y

Playing around writing acceptance tests which automate (not emulate) screen reader functionality, using Guidepup. You can write a script that spins up Safari, turns on voiceover, and executes scenarios which return a transcript to write assertions against. www.guidepup.dev #a11y #accessibility

If you say “carousel” three times in the mirror, a disgruntled UX Designer from 2008 appears behind you and mansplains the principles of animation easing.

What’s one component or pattern you constantly find accessibility issues with? It’s a “date picker” or “calendar widget” for me. Not sure if I’ve seen one that is intuitive and accessible for people who use assistive technology, or which doesn’t cause excessive cognitive load. #accessibility #a11y

We need a new term for “best practice”. It feels optional. Like “what you’ve done is fine, but here’s how others do it.” In reality, when we say best practice, we mean “this is a definite accessibility barrier, we just can’t log it as a failure in the scope of this standard.” #accessibility #a11y

The State of CSS 2025 survey results are now available: 2025.stateofcss.com/en-US/ Big thanks to @amitsheen.bsky.social, @saron.bsky.social, @miocene.io, @sjoy.lol, @joshwcomeau.com, @kilianvalkhof.com, and all the other contributors!

What’s your favourite response when a stakeholder says “we’ll fix accessibility later”? I often quote a case study from a post by @annaecook.bsky.social. It estimates it’s around 35 times more expensive to fix accessibility issues in production. www.deque.com/blog/auditin... #a11y #accessibility

In a world where performance reviews include all kinds of stupid metrics like “use of AI”, why isn’t accessibility a mandatory part of it? Do you agree it should be? If not, why not? #accessibility #a11y

👷🏽 Meet @craigabbott.co.uk "Meet Craig Abbott, another friendly face supporting the charming Northern arm of TetraLogical." #accessibility #professional tetralogical.com/blog/2025/08...

Accessibility and inclusion are not the same. For example, you can have a WCAG 2.2 compliant sign-up form, but only offer two options to choose from for “gender”. Can you think of any other examples? #a11y #accessibility #inclusion

Does your website have different language versions? Remember to translate your alternative text on images too. It’s quite common to find hard coded English text descriptions for images. It’s a WCAG fail which can easily fly under the radar! #accessibility #a11y

What’s one thing you wish was more widely known about digital accessibility? I’ll go first. I wish more developers knew how to check elements for accessible names, roles and values. #accessibility #a11y

Lovely fresh Sunday morning with a pop up hide and a camera. Hello Little Owl!

MEET THE SPEAKERS @craigabbott.co.uk is the former Head of Accessibility at the Department for Work and Pensions and the creator of the DWP Accessibility Manual.

A lot of #accessibility annotation kits rely on designers having a technical understanding of semantic roles, landmarks, autocomplete values etc. Lots of Frontend Devs don’t even understand that stuff. As a designer, you just need to be able to articulate the expected outcome for a user.

Always joked that Clark Kent had the worst disguise ever. But I regularly struggle to recognise people without their glasses! Maybe they were on to something!

@joehart.bsky.social loved your talk yesterday! So much infectious energy! I used to play games, and build things for fun. Now my side quests are often just more work, just under the guise of it being fun because it’s a personal project! A stark reminder to build more silly stuff!

Yesterday, I was introduced at @frontendnorth.bsky.social by the legend @letorey.co.uk. We joked about how I love to do wildlife photography, but I never really do anything with the photos. So here’s my favourite picture I’ve taken in 2025!

Huge well done to our final 4 speakers of the day 💚 Hope you all had a wonderful day! @whitep4nth3r.com @amyhupe.bsky.social @craigabbott.co.uk @joehart.bsky.social Next step, National Videogame Museum! 👾🍕

Made it to #FrontEndNorth. Already won some Lego. Today is going great!

I chuckled at this, but there was also a sad realisation. We all started as curious children, who used free will to gravitate to the things where we find joy. But somewhere along the way, some of us stopped dancing. We conformed. We ran the race we were told to run, and we forgot what brings us joy.

Tomorrow I’m talking at @frontendnorth.bsky.social on why you can’t audit your way to an accessible product. I’ll show examples of WCAG passes and real life examples of products that are complaint but totally unusable! If its not user centred, it’s not accessible www.tickettailor.com/events/front...

🎟️ Tickets are selling fast for 10th July, Sheffield www.tickettailor.com/events/front... If you're a designer, an engineer, or a design engineer: we have 8 excellent talks for you at Front End North! In no particular order...

Happy European Accessibility Act deadline day! 🎉 #accessibility #a11y

Why have they vertically centred the dot on the new gov.uk logo? The whole point of it being aligned to the baseline is it’s a dot in a web address? It’s Gov dot UK… Not Gov bullet UK! Awful.

I’ve written a blog post dissecting a real accessibility job role and what red flags you should look out before applying: www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/mission... #accessibility #a11y

🚨 Three months to go! In three months, on 10th September, Access:Given will be taking place at Newcastle Helix. We've got great speakers @ettiebaileyking.bsky.social , @craigabbott.co.uk, @heldutson.bsky.social , @lifeofablindgirl.bsky.social and @rachelanne.bsky.social of @contentdesign.london/

It’s just one month until @frontendnorth.bsky.social! Come to Sheffield to see our eight fabulous speakers: @amyhupe.bsky.social @whitep4nth3r.com @bell.bz @olu.online @craigabbott.co.uk @amyrogers.design @joehart.bsky.social and Nils Binder!

Day two of #UXLondon and very much looking forward to @craigabbott.co.uk’s talk!

Woahh! It's only one month until Front End North?! Let your friends know 🙌 We're busy backstage making the final arrangements for a cracking day, alongside our wonderful speakers: @amyhupe.bsky.social, @whitep4nth3r.com, @bell.bz @olu.online, @craigabbott.co.uk, @amyrogers.design, and more!