93 Building an accessible web

February 20, 2025·44 min·4 clips

Mike reveals that a quarter of people have disabilities, making web accessibility a critical issue for reaching everyone.

Ryan Cook opens on the public stakes of civic technology. Technology, politics, policy, tools, and service delivery all show up as choices with real social consequences, then Mike joins the conversation with the practical edge. He is a Drupal core accessibility maintainer, an open standards and practices lead at Civic Actions, and someone who has spent a long time around accessibility and sustainability. The useful question is government buying power. Mike does not treat accessible web work as a small compliance chore. He keeps coming back to the pressure governments can apply when they purchase technology. Collaboration is where the work gets sticky. Ryan asks whether the answer has to be international, and Mike argues that agencies, states, and local governments could already do a lot by working together. The American government is big enough to push vendors and teams toward accessible, open, well documented, secure, interoperable standards. Isolated projects keep the ceiling low. When agencies do not trade notes on lessons, requirements, and best practices, every team ends up relearning the same accessibility problems while deadlines close in. Standards give them a shared floor. Section 508 is one example, especially after the Obama administration refresh tied its guidelines to WCAG 2.0 AA. That floor has kept moving, with state and municipal governments now facing WCAG 2.1 requirements. Mike's bigger point is that compliance is only part of the job. Accessibility can teach people how to build better web services wherever they work next. The conversation stays grounded and reflective, moving from acronyms to the simple promise of public websites more people can use.

As heard by us

A clear case for accessible public services and the standards that support them.

Mike, a Drupal core accessibility maintainer and open standards lead at Civic Actions, brings Civic Tech Chat a steady, practical view of accessibility as a public-service issue.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a clear, serious talk about accessible government web work and why it matters.

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