I’m blind, and inaccessible government websites are a big reason I built A11yLens

I’m blind, and dealing with inaccessible websites is something I’m deeply frustrated by, especially when they are government websites. These are services people need to use. Being able to access them independently should be a basic expectation. That frustration is why I built A11yLens, an open source accessibility auditing tool for web projects. It checks HTML, CSS and component source code. It can also open a website in Chromium to inspect its accessibility tree and look for issues with keyboard navigation, labels, accessible names and other barriers. The reports explain the likely impact on screen reader users and suggest ways to address the findings. I also think there is an opportunity to use this alongside AI coding tools. Developers can give the findings to an AI assistant, work through the fixes and run the checks again. Combined with feedback from blind users and actual screen reader testing, that could help make more websites accessible to people like me. Automated checks cannot catch every accessibility issue. Pull requests are very welcome. I would be happy to see contributions, whether that means fixing a bug, improving a check, reducing false positives or making the documentation clearer. Reports from other screen reader users would also mean a lot. GitHub: github.com/eleven-hits/A11yLens npm: npmjs.com/package/@eleven-hits/a11ylens Contribution guide: github.com/eleven-hits/A11yLens/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md