AI replacing accessibility
For the longest time VS Code release notes gave accessibility a prominent place.
Now that space goes to AI.
I used to really enjoy reading about the improvements made to my code editor of choice. Lately, I haven’t, so I wanted to see if that feeling would show up in a graph:
Well, it does. Only three of the ten most recent releases mention accessibility at all while AI completely took over.
I really hope this isn’t where we’re heading as an industry. Accessibility isn’t a buzzword or a trend. I’d argue it’s even a pretty good indicator of quality in an era of vibe-coded slop.
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@medienbaecker definitely noticed this with some media agencies that I’m working with as well. Due to EU regulations, accessibility for websites was a huge topic for them and now all of this has been replaced with AI hype.
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@medienbaecker I heard a talk by a big German design agency two years ago who was very proud of their ecological behaviour and how they were building inclusive systems. They started to incorporate AI into there processes. Asked how that fitted into their proclaimed values, they didn't care. To me it seemed as if they've only ever cared about buzzwords they could sell to big clients – it's just that the buzzwords shifted. Today, everything is AI but it doesn't mean anything.
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@medienbaecker Your graph is a very nice way of communicating the issue!
