How to get started with Web Accessibility in 2026

Short summary

An updated guide to web accessibility in 2026, highlighting the EU's European Accessibility Act (EAA) that took effect in June 2025 and the implications of AI coding agents for accessibility. The author recommends hands-on learning: pick a real web page, run a Lighthouse audit in DevTools, explore issues, and manually verify with keyboard navigation and the Accessibility Tree. WCAG 2.2 remains the current standard, and while AI coding agents can help, their accessibility claims should be independently verified since they learn from often-inaccessible existing code.

• •EU's European Accessibility Act (EAA) took effect June 2025, increasing regulatory pressure
• •Hands-on approach: run Lighthouse audits, inspect issues, manually test keyboard navigation and semantic structure
• •AI coding agents produce accessibility claims that need independent verification — LLMs learn from largely inaccessible existing code

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.