I just released pdf-crawler, a tool to audit PDF accessibility at scale!

This is a direct "remix" of the brilliant work by the Luxembourg government's #accessibility team & their #simplA11yPDFCrawler - it’s a testament to the power of #OpenSource: a tool built for one #gov can be adapted to help everyone.

I relied heavily on #AI to refactoring the original tech into this GitHub-based scanner. It’s a great example of using AI to amplify good.

Thank you @AccessibilityLU for sharing your work!

This has come up before. Screen readers do not have a limit. Long-desc is no longer supported. However for much longer alt text, it probably makes more sense to put in an aria-described by pointing to a paragraph or page describing the content.

I don't think that a 1500 character limit is unreasonable. Most folks barely do 20.

But then maybe maybe NASA won't like it https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1112878868/webb-telescope-alt-text-visually-impaired

What if every project on GitHub had a ACCESSIBILITY.md

Would this commitment at the root of a project change anything?

This is a rough draft of what it could look like:
https://mgifford.github.io/ACCESSIBILITY.md

#Accessibility #OpenSource

I built a small prototype exploring how we might publish structured accessibility information about physical buildings:

https://mgifford.github.io/accessible-buildings/

Web #accessibility has standards as does the built environment.

There isn't a good model though to share the work to communicate what has been done via the web.

Serious critique welcome.

• What key #a11y attributes are missing?
• Are there existing standards to align with?
• What might stop adoption?
• What are the biggest risks in this approach?

Privacy is a big deal for cars, especially electric cars. Many are worried about Chinese cars. What is worth remembering is that Western car manufacturers all fail on respecting user privacy https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

#Privacy #EV

Digital public goods are enabling open collaboration at scale. Explore what shaped the #DPG ecosystem in 2025 in the new State of the DPG Ecosystem Report: https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/2025-DPG-Ecosystem-Report

#DigitalPublicGoods #DPGA #2025DPGEcosytemReport

Tag: @dpgalliance