Accessibility for Developers
17 July 2026

OZeWAI Ask the Professionals session – 17 July 2026 – Accessibility for developers.

Panelists

Eric Bailey (he/him)

Eric is an accessibility advocate, designer, developer, writer, and speaker. He is currently a senior accessibility designer at GitHub, where he helps to make the platform more accessible and usable for a global audience.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericwbailey/

Julie Grundy (she/her)

Julie is the Accessibility Assessment manager at Intopia, and has played a key role in many award-winning national and international projects. In 2025, she was named the Accessibility Specialist of the year, entering the Hall of Fame as part of the Centre for Accessibility’s Australian Access Awards.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-grundy-620551a/

Laurence Lewis – Telstra (he/him)

Laurence is an Accessibility Senior Specialist at Telstra. Starting in printing pre-press, he self-taught as a front-end developer. In 2013 while developing online media and courses for the Queensland Department of Education, accessibility caught his attention. Connecting with his mentor Bryan Garaventa helped shape his expertise over many years. He is the developer of the A11y Quick Check browser extension.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-lewis-77520365/

Moderator

Ricky Onsman (he/him)

Ricky is an Australian veteran of accessible web design and development both locally and internationally, from design agency work, freelancing, auditing, and training, to now writing testing rules, guidance articles and training courses for a global digital accessibility consultancy. He’s been a Committee Member of OZeWAI for over 10 years, is a regular host or panellist on Ask The Professionals webinars, presents on accessibility topics at conferences and meetups, and writes articles on related topics. Ricky is Principal Technical Writer at US digital accessibility giant Vispero, where he writes training courses, maintains the knowledge base and rules engine, and works on AI tools.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickyonsman/

17 July 2026 – Accessibility deep dive for developers

Resources and links

• • https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/a11y-quick-check/jlamgighkcjniljcdfpnhiemcakibepi
  • One option to start: https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/conformance/wcag-em/
  • And… https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/
  • Another good site https://thisiswcag.com/
  • I like MS Accessibility Insights which has a manual testing process you can follow. You’d end up modifying it to your needs, but it’s a good starting point
  • A few other resources are on the ozewai website https://ozewai.org/resources/getting-started-with-accessibility/
  • https://humanrights.gov.au/resource-hub/by-resource-type/reviews-and-inquiries/reviews/disability-discrimination-act-review
  • Julie: https://vimium.github.io/
  • OZeWAI: Accessibility design training, shared brown bag lunches/sessions and resources: https://www.w3.org/WAI/roles/designers/
  • OZeWAI:We have many benefits, including the Mutua11y mentoring program https://ozewai.org/blog/careers/ozewai-to-offer-mentoring-for-emerging-accessibility-professionals/
  • Find an accessibility specialist from our consultant directory https://ozewai.org/resources/consultant-directory/
  • Please share topic ideas for future sessions https://forms.gle/SAC3M6hiSp2M9YS17
  • Julie: https://github.com/Intopia/intopia-web-accessibility-skill is one thing we’re trying – still experimental!
  • Eric: if it’s helpful: https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/building-a-general-purpose-accessibility-agent-and-what-we-learned-in-the-process/

Comments and notes:

• Deneb: That’s such a great message! I need to get better about saying that: “Well, let’s think about this and how to make it accessible. It may not work quite how you’re thinking, but let’s see how we can make it work…”
• Glen: If anyone asks “will we pass” A11y, the answer is always “of course not.”. If you don’t know how your software will behave until after you’ve built it, it fails A11y, engineering, science and The Enlightenment.
• Eric Bailey (he/him): Julie pines for a tabindex=”2″ to comment on
• Zaid: I tried to develop a framework for the Web Team at the Ministry of Education (New Zealand), hence why I’m curious to know what Accessibility Consultants use 🙂 — Blogged about it here: https://www.pandauxstudio.com/article/accessibility-as-strategy
• OZeWAI: Some initial steps is to ask if they know if the widget has been tested or has an Accessible Conformance Report (ACR) – if you are not sure – add the details to the OZeWAI PAL
• Thoughts on https://www.getstark.co
  • OZeWAI: Great question: will also ask it in our Aug session: https://events.humanitix.com/ozewai-accessible-design-tools-processes-ask-the-professionals-14-august-2026
• Colour contrast in WCAG 2.x is a bit clunky. The new Advanced Perception of Contrast Algorithm will probably be the base in WCAG 3.0, and gives much perceptually better colour schemes. But APCA has lots’n’lots of detail (e.g. many quanta of text size)
  • Eric: APCA has been removed from WCAG 3 as a contender. They’re working on a different updated algorithm
• Zaid: Thoughts on Accessibility statements on websites which detail current posture and roadmaps for inclusivity or legal compliance theater.
  • OZeWAI: Accessibility statements are not an ACR or a certified report of an audit. It’s a great start but should be a way to contact them about their roadmap and timings 🙂
  • Deneb (Captain Accessible) Pulsipher:I do think that they can be a great signal to real users that you care, so I like having a log of accessibility fixes right there so your visitors know that accessibility really does matter to you.
  • I did come across this example which I felt provided some transparency: https://wellington.govt.nz/about-this-site/accessibility