It’s, uh, been a minute (8 months!) since we last sent out an Assistiv Labs newsletter. At least if you subscribe, you know you won’t get spammed! 😂

Miss us? The Assist is the official newsletter of Assistiv Labs. We build tools to help the people who make the web make it more inclusive. 💙

📣 Hot off the presses! We just hit “send” on the latest Assistiv Labs newsletter. In this issue:

- Innovative ways Zendesk uses our Live Testing platform
- CSUN recap
- New account options
- & more! 💜

the-assist.ghost.io/miss-us/

#lazyWeb Friends on macOS, what is your favorite tool for testing your work using a Windows screen reader?

Do you use a Virtual Machine (VM)? If so, what do you use to run it? Do you use an online tool like @assistivlabs.com ? Bonus points for free tools!

Lots of great quotable lines from @deque's Axe-con, including this gem from @stephaniewalter.bsky.social: "You can't sprinkle eggs on the cupcake after baking it. Fixing accessibility later is messy, slow, ineffective!"

www.deque.com/axe-con/sess...

Our February meetup is tonight! Join us at 6:00pm Pacific for a virtual presentation by @devonpersing.bsky.social and @segdeha.com on continuous accessibility. RSVP for the meeting link; details below!

#PDXa11yUX #a11y #UX #Meetup #Portland #PDX

I hope to see you tonight!

Browser developers are working on custom form controls ( `appearance:base`), the next giant task is looming: customisable input type=date/datetime/color pickers.

These are huge and have wildly varied UI. Send me your examples, I'd love to see them and build up a body of these pickers.

Looking forward to this!

Making Accessibility the Default: Continuous Accessibility Practices [virtual], Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 5:45 PM | Meetup **Virtual Event:** Making Accessibility the Default: Continuous Accessibility Practices **Presenters:** Devon Persing and Andrew Hedges Often relegated to episodic efforts

Don’t miss this online presentation by @devonpersing.bsky.social & @segdeha.com on practical tips for making Continuous Accessibility the default at your organization. 💜

www.meetup.com/portland-acc...

From Mac to Windows: Expanding accessibility testing at Zendesk with Assistiv Labs At Zendesk, we don’t just see accessibility as a technical or business challenge. We see it as a truly human issue. As a leading provider of customer service software, we’re committed to making sure e...

The Accessibility Team at Zendesk uses our Live Testing system in some interesting ways.

• Finding workarounds for users on different screen reader/browser combinations

• Confirming correct localization of UI text using JAWS

How do you use our platform?

assistivlabs.com/articles/zen...

Assistiv Labs • jessica oddi Design identity suite for a company who makes tools for web accessibility testing. With templates and custom assets.

Beautiful!!! And we totally need to make that @assistivlabs.com tote bag happen! 💜

www.jessicaoddi.com/work/assisti...

The Practical Accessibility Course A get-right-down-to-it online course for Web designers and developers who want to start creating more accessible Web user interfaces and digital products today

📣 Hear hear! The biggest savings on the Practical Accessibility course start *today*—for a limited time only.

Starting today, you can get the course for 30% off — that's $279 instead of $399. The discounted price excludes sales tax that may be applied depending on where you are buying from.

In my conversation with @kevinpowell.co a few weeks ago I mentioned that one of the ways to get people to care about #accessibility is to help them understand it better. And one way to help them understand it better is to debunk common accessibility myths.

NVDA Keyboard Shortcuts for Different User Needs Master NVDA keyboard shortcuts for web developers. Navigate content, test forms, and build more accessible websites with this essential guide.

It dawned on me that I should be be sharing out the accessibility articles I link to at work on social media. Here's a good one from today's RSS feed: www.a11y-collective.com/blog/nvda-ke...

Code samples! Videos of test runs! What more could a person want?! 💜

Automating Screen Readers for Accessibility Testing Automated accessibility testing is an essential component of a successful accessibility strategy, but traditional automated accessibility tools haven’t included screen readers. New tools are being dev...

We’ve invested a ton of effort into building out screen reader automation as part of our end-to-end accessibility testing service. And we’ve learned a ton along the way!

This article goes deep into the geeky details of why & how to automate screen readers. 🦾

assistivlabs.com/articles/aut...

Meet Accessible UX Research, A Brand-New Smashing Book — Smashing Magazine Meet “Accessible UX Research,” our upcoming book to make your UX research inclusive. Learn how to recruit, plan, and design with disabled participants in mind. Print shipping in August 2025. eBook ava...

I'll buy an eBook copy of Accessible UX Research for the first five folks who are interested! I'll need an email address to send a copy to when it's published (currently in pre-order).

If you're into user research and disability, this book is for you. www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/acce...

How we use Assistiv Labs to test accessibility - thanks to their sponsoring of open source projects YouTube video by Wagtail

Did you know Assistiv Labs offers a free-for-open-source plan? The good folks @wagtail.org use it to test their CMS using Windows screen readers. Our only requirement is the project is under a liberal license (e.g., MIT). Get in touch if this would be helpful to you!

www.youtube.com/shorts/sBUfU...

“I’m not talking about “ideal” or “optimized” – the bar is pretty low, so I’m just talking about something that works at all for people with a disability.” 💔

What I Wish Someone Told Me When I Was Getting Into ARIA — Smashing Magazine [Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/) is an inevitability when working on web accessibility. That said, it’s everyone’s first time learning ...

ARIA! It exists and on a long enough timeline you'll need to use it. Here's how to get into the right headspace to do so! #a11y www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/06/what...

Links to recordings of the webinar, with and without audio descriptions, are available in the FAQ section of our page about the end-to-end testing service.

assistivlabs.com/use-cases/en...

The course includes:

- 15+ hrs of video content (~2 full-day workshops)
- 40+ chapters available in both video and text
- Accessibility toolkit
- Buy once, access forever
- Complementary free, 6-months unlimited access to
@assistivlabs.com

+ all up-and-coming updates

This webinar was by far our most in-depth public discussion of our end-to-end testing service. This should be of interest to any accessibility leaders who are interested in doubling the WCAG coverage of their automated accessibility testing.

So cute! 😍

We’ll post a version of the video with audio descriptions early next week. 💜

Accessibility First End-to-end Testing – Webinar – Assistiv Labs YouTube video by Assistiv Labs

Our first webinar is in the books! 🙌 Such a great time talking through our accessibility-first end-to-end testing platform. Thanks to those who showed up live and here’s the recording for anyone else who couldn’t make it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh6n...

Super excited for this! Should be interesting for the test automation nerds 🤓 but also everyone just looking for a smarter way to validate the #accessibility of their digital products. Join us! 💜

If you've never used Assistiv Labs I recommend joining this Webinar if you can especially if you have a Practical Accessibility course account and haven't used your complementary Assistiv Labs access yet and are unsure how to use it in your work.👇

End-to-end Accessibility Testing - Assistiv Labs Instantly test with real screen readers, magnifiers, and more. Make sure your websites and apps are accessible.

We want the webinar to be as useful as possible for folks, so let us know what questions you have about our end-to-end testing service and we’ll do our best to address them!

assistivlabs.com/use-cases/en...

two girls are sitting on a yellow couch and one has a smiley face shirt on Alt: Carly & Harper from iCarly sitting on a couch, fist bumping

Date/time: Weds, May 7 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm UTC

Platform: Zoom with auto-captioning & transcripts enabled (we’ll post the recording to our YouTube channel afterwards with corrected captions and audio descriptions); please let us know if you would benefit from any additional accommodations!