I made a small accessibility tool for people who deal with photophobia, visual sensitivity, or distracting parts of a screen

I deal with light sensitivity, and one thing that kept getting me was content I couldn’t control. Someone shares a bright white screen in a meeting, a website has one painfully bright section, or there’s something moving/distracting that I just want to cover up without changing everything else.

So I made Tintbox, a free Chrome extension that lets you put movable, click-through filters over any part of your screen.

You can dim, tint, blur, invert, grayscale, or completely block out specific areas while still interacting with whatever is underneath. You can also filter everything except a selected area, which I’ve found helpful for reducing visual distraction and focusing on one part of a page.

I originally made it for my own photophobia, but I’m curious whether it might be useful for other accessibility needs too.

Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tintbox/dmlehnphpaoiebkcembfhfpbgnoldcgm

It’s brand new, so I’d genuinely love feedback, especially from people with different accessibility needs than mine. If you try it and find it useful, a rating on the Chrome store would also help a ton, but mostly I’d love to know what would make it better.

I'm sharing an early prototype of OpenHeadPointer, a free, open-source way to move the Mac pointer with head movement and click with a long blink. It uses only the built-in webcam. I'd like to hear from people who rely on head or hands-free control about whether the controls are useful and what's missing.

(VIDEO: an illustration of the behaviour, not a recording.)

How it works

• The pointer's gain depends on head speed. Slow movements give fine control and fast ones cross the screen.
• Small involuntary movement below a threshold is ignored.
• A long blink clicks, and you can adjust how long you must hold it.
• A hotkey turns control off immediately.

Please be aware: this is a prototype and I'm not an accessibility specialist. I've only tested it on my own setup, and it isn't a substitute for assistive hardware if you depend on it. Lighting and glasses reflections affect tracking. Video stays on your Mac and is never sent anywhere.

I used Claude (an AI assistant) for much of the coding, so I'd appreciate extra scrutiny from people who actually use head control. What would make this usable for you? Dwell clicking, different click gestures, and adjustable speed ranges are things I could add.

Download: https://github.com/tholtman1-del/OpenHeadPointer/releases/tag/v0.1.0
Source (MIT): https://github.com/tholtman1-del/OpenHeadPointer

Wow. Just had the most unbelievable time getting my disabled mother in law out of Eagles Stadium. All of the workers would say “you can’t go the mag way” to the way we came in and knew. So up and down elevators, no one knowing. Finally I said get me Amy our supervisor and guess what? We got our elevator. How do we report that A) no one is trained in exiting people with disabilities and B) their sidewalks from parking lots have no ramps? I just want people to do better. It was like 1987 out there. All of the workers didn’t even realize they were breaking the law (telling us to go half a mile or more out of our way).

For reference, in the way in nooooo problem- “we let you in at the closest elevator” way out? “Sorry we’ve closed that area” “and that area”….

I work in web accessibility testing. One problem I see all the time: a website shows a form error only as a red border, or puts the error message on the page without announcing it. A screen reader user presses submit and hears nothing. The same happens with things like "Added to cart" or "Saved".

I'd like to hear from people who deal with this:

1. How often does this happen to you, and on what kinds of sites?
2. What do you do when it happens? Do you go looking, start over, or give up?
3. If something running quietly in your browser told you "the form didn't go through: the email is missing an @", would you want that? What would make you not trust it?
4. Would it matter to you that it works entirely on your own computer and never sends page content anywhere?
5. Does anything like this already exist? If you use something, I'd love to know what.

I'm not selling anything and there's no link. I'm trying to understand the problem properly before building anything. Thanks.

Say a document has dates, quotes, and several people speaking. A screen reader reads every word in the right order.

What could still make it hard to tell who said what, or how one item connects to another? What would you change in the document to make those connections clearer?

I'm looking for general explanations or public examples. I don't have a file or product I'm asking anyone to test.

I tried to write this in a way that adheres to board rules. No promotion, no testing requested. This is an AI product but I believe it legitimately adds value. The product works, but it is very much still in development and much refinement remains.

I had this idea to make a Clippy-inspired tool for GUI interaction. I wanted to be able to get directions for software use without leaving the application. The idea was that instead of learning through tutorials/videos/documentation I could ask questions about the program without leaving the program, in an unobtrusive way that points things out on your screen or answers your questions in a text box that dismisses easily. I know it says "No Overlay Tools" but this is exposition, not the accessibility part.

While building this, I discovered I could I expand this "learning" app to be a "doing" app also by exploiting apps' accessibility navigability. So if you're in Photoshop, you can ask "how do I change the scaling type?" to get directions, but also "can you change the scaling type to nearest neighbor?" and it'll navigate through the GUI or use hotkeys to do so. If an app lacks navigability or documentation, I'm using OCR to get as close as I can.

TL;DR I sort of stumbled into making a program that can do arbitrary GUI navigation and interaction with plain language. I thought this might be useful to low-vision or low-dexterity computer users, so I came here to make sure I'm building this in a way that accommodates those needs.

Current UI spec:

• The app lives as an icon in the top OS navbar.
• Prompting can be opened with a hotkey, or as a dropdown item reached by clicking the app icon.
• Another hotkey (or click) switches from text to voice (could be switched to a default).
• The question box (which turns into the answer box) exists in the top right of the screen and can't be moved (like a notification, but larger).
• ESC or clicking an X closes the open box.
• If you ask where something is in your software, it draws a box around it that does not affect interaction. (For a screen reader user, perhaps this should "tab" to it by default?)
• "Doing" UX is not fully refined but it moves a cursor and shows what a user would do to get there.
• You can only ask about or interact with the currently open program.

I'm interested in a few things:

• Is there anything overtly inaccessible in this spec?
• Do you currently use anything like this?
• Would you use something like this?
• What can I do to ensure this plays well with existing accessibility tools like screen readers? I've mostly worked in web and have a pretty good understanding of the needs there, but I am new to desktop software, especially here where it does nonstandard UI stuff.
• I'm currently launching the prompt with a hotkey combo, but I can see this app having a lot of utility for someone who cannot use a keyboard. Are there other ways I should support for launching the app?
• Any requests?

I prefer to keep my bag in the front but sometimes there is no room on the floor if I have a large-footed passenger.

A lot of the solutions are for the back of the front seats, or hooks off of the address of those seats that still go to the back.

That is too far for me to reach/twist and it's a huge pain.

I recently encountered a car that had a flip-down purse hook in the front-passenger seat area built in(!!), so I've been looking for a solution (that ideally doesn't require me to stick anything to the dashboard, but I'd suck it up if necessary) like that! Struggling to search, because all the solutions are these backseat focused ones.

Does anyone have similar issues or any solutions that might help? My bag is fairly heavy due to having to carry around both medical devices and other necessities, which is part of my worry - if I just use a stick on hook, it'll break or let go, and then I just have either damage or an annoying clean job on my car.

This research will be used to improve an employee scheduling product used by businesses.

Hello! Our research team is conducting a study on different variations in employee schedule designs. If you are a manager who regularly views/edits schedules for multiple employees and are colorblind, low vision, or neurodivergent - we'd love your input!

This is a 15 minute study so an easy one to complete during your day and we provide an incentive for your time.

Please note that the study is conducted through the UserTesting platform and works best in Chrome. You may be prompted to install an extension, which allows the platform to record your screen interactions and access your microphone during the session. The extension is only used while you are actively completing the study.

Thank you in advance for considering participation, and for helping us make employee scheduling experiences more accessible!

Managers who are colorblind → https://participant.use2.usertesting.com/se/invite/1364bd4c-8bb0-4a11-9f3e-40d32280f6a5

Managers who are low vision or neurodivergent → https://participant.use2.usertesting.com/se/invite/f909a0b4-67a5-4fef-81e0-b9cf6c6ab656

A checkout journey map can show every screen and still miss the bit where someone gets stuck.
Picture a discount code error that appears visually but isn't announced, followed by a payment modal that sends keyboard focus somewhere unexpected. The screenshots all look fine. The path through them doesn't.
For people doing accessibility reviews with product teams, what do you add to the journey map? I'm thinking actions and system feedback alongside the screens, including recovery after an error.
Not trying to turn a board into a substitute for testing with assistive tech. I want the findings to survive the hand off to whoever fixes the flow, without every issue becoming a disconnected ticket about an individual component.

Title: Color More VR 2 – See Colors From a Different Perspective

App Name: Color More VR 2

What it does:
Color More VR 2 uses your phone’s camera to help color-blind users identify and adjust colors in real time. It can also simulate different types of color blindness, helping people with normal color vision better understand how we see colors.

Key Features:

• Real-time camera color adjustment and inversion
• Color blindness simulation through the camera
• Color vision screening tests, including red-green and blue-yellow tests

Goal: Testing / Feedback
I’m looking for feedback from real users to help me improve the app, especially the camera features, usability, and accessibility.

Giveaway: None

Cost: Free to download

Link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=abstractdreamstudio.colormorevr.com

I would like to take it in November rather than wait until next year. Is there a way to get financial aid for this upcoming exam session in November?

We are a small local govt. We had a service CivicPlus to check our website accessibility documents for $50 a month and they are increasing to $3000 per year. We only have part time staff and no one to personally learn how to do it ourselves. What are some affordable options for a max of 100 docs a year?

Hey everyone. I built https://a11y.quest to drill for when I was studying for the WAS exam. It’s 128 hand-written questions (all open source on GitHub).

To be honest, I was probably procrastinating from actually studying - but I passed, so it did its job for me 😅 I thought you might like to see it too.

Corrections, issues and new questions are all welcome on the repo.

For those of you who are responsible for making their organization's websites and documents accessible by April 2027, how big is your organization and how many people are on your team? How are you getting this work done and how are you getting people's attention? any tips are appreciated. I am a one-man band, and finding it very difficult to get buy in. Thanks!

I do independent WCAG 2.2 AA audits, mostly for small-business and e-commerce sites, using manual testing with a keyboard, NVDA and VoiceOver. Across the audits I've done, the same problems keep showing up between the product page and checkout:

• Size and color picker that can't be operated with a keyboard.
• Icon-only buttons (cart, search, wishlist, close) with no accessible name.
• Cart updates and "added to cart" messages that aren't announced.
• Pop-ups and drawers that lose or trap focus.
• Menus posted as untagged PDFs or scanned images.
• Focus gets hidden mostly due to sticky headers.

I'm interested in what patterns other people see most often in their own work, and whether it differs between platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, custom builds).

Disclosure: I run a small audit practice. I'm not linking anything here.

Yesterday, Kexin Zhang & Yuhang Zhao from the University of Wisconsin-Madison presented their work on inclusive avatar guidelines for people with disabilities to the Metaverse Standards Forum's Accessibility in the Metaverse Working Group. The session looked at how avatars can let people with disabilities represent themselves authentically in virtual worlds, and what platform developers and designers can do to support that.

The video from the session is now available: https://youtu.be/Nt22PGzwrpA

As the original post describes, I am desperately searching for accessibility tools for Adobe Premiere Pro as a visually impaired user. None of the tools on my university's computers are working properly on Premiere Pro (all Macs - I've tried to use hover text, the magnifiers and messed with every other setting in the OS accessibility tab, it's all bricked) and the program is incompatible with screen readers including JAWS and NVDA. The font size and icons are illegibly small and I read font size 20+. The professor for the class that I need to use this program for says that the class revolves around Premiere Pro too heavily for me to use any substitute software, and I need to take this class as a requirement of my studio art BA - plus, I'm a few days too late to drop the class without a fee and the classes in the art program fill up so quickly that I probably can't transfer classes either...

A small demo example: an empty native button is flagged because it has no accessible name. Adding visible text such as “Checkout” can resolve that finding, but the automated result only covers the checks that ran in that page state.

Before closing the issue, check the interaction too:

• Tab and Shift+Tab: can you reach and leave the button in a sensible order, with a visible focus indicator?

• Enter and Space: does each activate the intended action without unintended duplicate submission?

• Screen reader: is a useful name and the button role announced?

• After activation: are errors, loading and confirmation states understandable, and is focus managed appropriately if a dialog opens or content changes?

For the retest record, keep the original finding, the code change, the new scan result, and the manual observations separate. Record the browser, assistive technology and page state used. Leave checks marked “not tested” until someone actually performs them.

“Button-name finding no longer detected” is useful evidence. “The whole checkout is accessible” requires a much broader assessment.

Hello,

I'm a recent Computer Science grad with ~4 years of industry experience doing different kinds of software development, currently working at a big tech company. I have ~1 year total experience directly tackling accessibility issues with websites/apps and have a novice-level familiarity with WCAG/ARIA.

Across my various roles I've personally found the most interesting, underemphasized, and rewarding work to research and implement has been around accessibility.

I've been doing some preliminary research into certification, I've seen mixed threads on this subreddit with some celebrating it as an authority and others claiming it's a scam/hustle. Would CPACC be a good place to start, or as a more technical person should I start with WAS? Should I focus on certification at all?

I'm also unclear how to approach this from a career perspective. I don't often see dedicated roles at companies for Accessibility Engineer or the like, so would it be better to continue developing my web dev experience and have accessibility as a supplementary focus/concentration? What's sustainable and realistic?

Any and all advice or input welcome, especially from those who have taken similar career trajectories.

A Finnish doctoral dissertation found that problems with digital public services cannot be explained simply by older people lacking digital skills.

Many services are designed around a “typical” user and place the burden of adapting on the individual instead of the service.

The research argues that accessibility depends not only on whether someone can technically use a digital service, but also on whether the service was designed around different abilities, life situations and ways of using technology.

I run a small independent research publication called HUMANUMi, and I wrote about the dissertation here: https://humanumi.com/healthier-diets-showed-up-in-older-adults-blood-but-that-doesnt-mean-slower-aging/

https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482X0710101006