My Favorite Accessibility Wins This Year

I’ll be honest – accessibility work can feel like shouting into the void sometimes.

You spot an issue, you report it, and then… crickets. Or worse, you get a defensive response about how “it works fine for most users” or “we’ll add it to the backlog.” After enough of those interactions, it’s easy to adopt a defeatist attitude. Why bother reaching out if nothing’s going to change?

Here’s the thing: most of the time, nothing does change. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But every once in a while, you reach out to someone who actually listens, cares, and takes action. And those moments? They’re worth talking about.

These aren’t huge, headline-grabbing wins. They’re small fixes that many people will never notice. But they matter. And they remind me that speaking up isn’t always futile, even when it usually feels that way.

The Plugin Dev Who Fixed It in the Next Release

Just last week, I reached out to a WordPress plugin developer to flag an issue I’d spotted: a div masquerading as a button. It looked like a button, it acted like a button for mouse users, but for keyboard and screen reader users? It was broken.

I sent a quick email explaining the issue and why it mattered. The response came back within a day: “Thanks for flagging this. We’ll have it fixed in the next release cycle.”

That’s it. No pushback. No “we’ll consider it.” Just a straightforward commitment to fix it.

It’s a small change – probably a few lines of code – but it means that when the next version ships, keyboard users and screen reader users will be able to interact with that element just like everyone else.

The Team Who Iterated Until They Got It Right

A while back, I requested a refund from a plugin, citing its inaccessibility. I wasn’t trying to make a statement – I just couldn’t use the product effectively, and I didn’t think it was fair to pay for something that didn’t work for me.

The response surprised me. Instead of processing the refund and moving on, the team reached out to ask for details about what was wrong. We went back and forth through several iterations of improvements. They asked questions, tested fixes, and kept me in the loop the whole time.

By the end, they’d made meaningful accessibility improvements to their plugin. I didn’t need the refund anymore – the product actually worked.

That experience stuck with me. It would have been so easy for them to just issue the refund and forget about it. But they cared enough to dig in and make it better.

The SaaS Platform That Rewrote Their Widget

This one’s my favorite.

I reported accessibility issues to a B2B SaaS platform I was using. Their team took it seriously – really seriously. They completely rewrote a customer-facing widget to address the problems I’d raised.

Months later, they held an event, and when I was meeting some folks from their team, one of them said, “Oh yeah, you’re the one who reached out about that widget not being accessible.”

Turns out, someone had internally been campaigning for quite some time for an accessibility-focused rewrite of that widget and a message from a paying customer was just the leverage needed to get it prioritized by leadership and the dev team. And it went even beyond that to the team prioritizing accessibility more in other parts of the application, too.

I wasn’t expecting any of that. I was just trying to use their software. But my feedback helped spark a much bigger shift in how they approached accessibility – and that’s going to benefit every user who comes after me.

Silence guarantees nothing will change. Speaking up at least gives change a chance.

Why I Still Speak Up (Even When It’s Exhausting)

Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat this. I’m sharing three success stories from this year, and those are three out of dozens of tries.

Most of the time when you report an accessibility issue, nothing happens. Your email gets buried. Your bug report sits in a backlog for years. Or you get a response that makes it clear they don’t see accessibility as a priority.

It’s draining. It’s frustrating. And it’s completely valid to feel worn out by it.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: silence guarantees nothing will change. Speaking up at least gives change a chance.

I’m not saying you’ll get results every time. You won’t and I certainly don’t, either. But when you do reach someone who’s willing to listen, that small fix might be the thing that makes their product usable for someone else. And occasionally, like with that SaaS platform, your feedback might be the catalyst for something bigger.

Those moments don’t erase all the times nothing happened. But they’re enough to remind me that it’s not always pointless.

If You’re Worn Out, That’s Okay

You don’t owe anyone your energy.

I need to pause here and say something important: if you’re feeling exhausted, frustrated, or burned out by this work, that’s completely valid.

You don’t owe anyone your energy. You don’t have to be the person who reports every issue or educates every developer. If you’re tired of explaining the same things over and over, or if you just don’t have the capacity right now, that’s okay. There’s no judgment here.

This work is heavy and it has a way of always falling on the shoulders of the same small group of people. Sometimes, the most important thing you can do for yourself is walk away.

But if you do have the energy – if you have the spoons to send that email or file that bug report – please consider doing it. Not because it’s guaranteed to work, but because it might. And if we don’t speak up, there’s zero chance anything will change.

You don’t have to do it every time. You don’t have to do it perfectly. But when you can, it’s worth trying.

I’m sharing three success stories from this year, and those are three out of dozens of tries.

Small Wins Still Count

I’m sharing these stories not because they’re typical, but because they happened at all. They’re proof that some developers do care, some teams will listen, and some products do get better when users speak up.

Will every interaction go this way? No. Not even close.

But every fixed button, every improved navigation pattern, every rewritten interface matters. Those small fixes make the web more accessible for real people. And they happen because someone decided to speak up, even when it felt like it might not make a difference.

The web gets better one fix at a time. Sometimes you’ll be the person who makes that fix happen. Sometimes you won’t. All you can do is try.