Accessibility in the Age of AI: The Robots Are Also Blind

Accessible design has always been good design: clear structure, meaningful controls, predictable interactions, useful errors, and paths to recovery. These things help humans understand and operate software. Increasingly, they also help AI understand it. As AI becomes another way people experience the web, accessibility takes on new urgency. Some users are already using AI as their sight: to describe screens, summarize pages, interpret forms, and navigate interfaces that were not built with them in mind. At the same time, AI agents and browser assistants are beginning to interact with our apps directly. This talk explores why accessibility is not a side concern in the AI era. What is good for humans is often good for LLMs, and what breaks for disabled users will often break for AI too. JavaScript teams that build accessible interfaces are not just doing the right thing. They are building software that is clearer, more adaptable, more testable, and ready for the AI-shaped web.