iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

DOJ is saying, in as many words: if you try to automate your accessibility testing, you need to be aware of the liability to which you're exposing your agency. Part of the value of USWDS has always been to help limit that liability, and this change risks discarding much of that value.

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Extension of Compliance Dates for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities

A lot of the difficulties that rule specifically addresses are related to remediating documents (like PDF/Word docs) rather than websites or apps but all of the reasoning applies to all digital media. And here's a link to the rule if you want to check that. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

federalregister.gov

By this Interim Final Rule ("IFR"), the Department of Justice ("Department") is revising the regulations implementing title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") to extend the compliance d...

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But in the rule making that change, DOJ (and i have to emphasize, lest everything I'm saying seem hopelessly politicized, this is *this* DOJ, in its own rulemaking) said:

In the 2024 final rule, the Department attempted to strike the appropriate balance between preserving public entities' limited resources and ensuring accessibility for individuals with disabilities. But the advancement and availability of technology did not meet the Department's expectations when it had struck that balance. Advanced technology, such as generative AI, does not yet reliably automate the remediation of inaccessible content at scale, and staff resources and availability continue to pose significant challenges. Nor did covered entities' resources meet the Department's expectations. The less public entities can rely on technology to make their web content and mobile apps accessible, the more they will need to rely on manual work instead. This interplay is highlighted by the recent concerns raised about the 2024 final rule's compliance dates.

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Some background: there was a big compliance deadline that was supposed to in April 2026, after which DOJ would begin enforcement of many digital accessibility requirements for state & local governments. However, they pushed that deadline back a year.

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I've said some about why I (and others in the industry) think it's impossible to fully automate accessibility testing, but it's not just us. The Department of Justice agreed as recently as earlier this year.

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These real use cases are, by definition, novel and not part of what went into building the automations. Supporting those users will, once again, require an understanding of general accessibility principles but also the expertise & judgment to evaluate how they apply in the specific implementation.

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Part of the role of the design system team is to help users put the components together in ways that doesn't undo all the upfront accessibility work in the components. In part, that's what docs are for, but the real work is in directly supporting users with their real use cases.

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Accessibility expertise in design systems doesn't stop at shipping accessible components either. There's no such thing as a perfectly accessible design system, but even if there were, that guarantee would be worthless once people started using the components in their own sites & apps.

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Automating all accessibility testing is a pipe dream

Nicolas Steenhout has done a great analysis of *why* it's a pipe dream www.linkedin.com/pulse/automa.... The analysis is multifaceted (and correct, imo) but boils down to the ineradicable role of human experience & judgment in evaluating accessibility in context.

linkedin.com

The National Design Studio has taken over the US Web Design System (USWDS). Its main development priority is now “reusable accessibility testing tooling for current and future USWDS versions.

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It's great that they know they need to gesture at "[using] accessibility expertise and relevant testing with people with disabilities to validate expectations and investigate gaps as coverage expands." They still seem to want to take that expertise and automate it. I think this is a pipe dream.

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Reusable accessibility testing, improvements to USWDS 3, predictable releases, and research for the next version.

The link in that discussion post is to a roadmap issue, which cashes out in more detail what this automation entails. Despite the changes to the discussion post, this issue still reads to me like the desired end state is total automation. github.com/orgs/uswds/p...

github.com

USWDS roadmap • uswds

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In the early days of the new prompt engineer's work on USWDS, he announced an intent to fully automate accessibility testing. The community rightly pushed back on this, and the announcement was tweaked in response bsky.app/profile/matt...

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(threading note: i'm doing a separate longer thread about everything USWDS-related, and i'll link to this in there. But while this is all relevant to that, I want to go off on a longer accessibility-focused tangent here)

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One of the big issues with the AI takeover of USWDS is the planned use of AI to automate accessibility testing. I want to dig more into what was first announced, how the posture has changed since then (and how it hasn't), and why law, policy, and practice make full automation impossible.

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Custom wash cycles is one of those ideas that seems like an idea if you just want to add features but that would never survive contact with real users.

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Earlier this year, I believed planning was going to become the most important part of building software with AI.

I was just reading this and thought it was interesting inasmuch as i thought it was a plausible accounting of ways in which AI-driven dev falls down. But it still omits any engagement with other people which is and always will be the part that makes real value. aymannadeem.github.io/artificial/i...

aymannadeem.github.io

Plan mode is dead

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DOGE torched that hard-earned trust along with so many other things. If there really is a realignment coming, it’s going to be even harder for civic tech-minded folks to earn the trust that‘s critical for successful partnerships.

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“Build with not for” is a civic tech mantra that emphasized that the work was about partnering with agencies who had deep subject matter expertise. USDS and 18F were able to eventually earn trust that they weren’t techbro know-it-alls coming to muscle out career employees.

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Jacob Harris @jacobharr.is · 03/10/2026

Bad post about a good article. But there’s one huge contrast it overlooks between DOGE and the civic tech model it tried to kill: DOGE ignored agency expertise, while civic tech tried to enhance and enable it. It‘s an important distinction and shows what some of the challenges ahead will be.

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

The DOGE kids like to act as if they were super bureaucracy hackers and whizzes but they basically got cheat codes to ignore the rules binding everybody else and then most of them could barely last 6 months anyway www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... Gavin Kliger is such a little monster

theguardian.com

‘Elon is my prophet’: how Musk’s Doge team took a wrecking ball to Washington

When the new ‘department of government efficiency’ sent young techies to disrupt federal agencies, not everyone complied. Here’s what happened when one worker fought to protect immigrant data

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 02/10/2026

Wake up, babe. New ibiblio dropped (i dont have anything to do with it, i just love it) www.ibiblio.org

ibiblio.org

Making sure you're not a bot!

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

Dan Hon @danhon.com · 02/10/2026

I have updated my Buffy agile meme

Buffy from Hush holding up a white board on which I've photoshopped: "They're using AI to do the wrong things faster!" but it originally said AGILE and I scrubbed out the G and the L.

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

Greg Walker @suddenlygreg.com · 01/10/2026

I'm not a designer. I'm a developer. The USWDS documentation approach to explaining not just how to use components but when and why is a major asset to me. And it reminds me to consider things I might not have otherwise.

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I should say the germ of the idea for the post came from here, but the blame for any half-baked thoughts is on me bsky.app/profile/bust...

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

Mischief & Craft - A design system is what it does

I think there's a decent chance the new AI-pilled USWDS is going to be built on shadcn, and I don't think it's a good fit. I wrote a very little bit about why I think that but I could write a hell of a lot more. matthenry.fyi/posts/a-syst...

matthenry.fyi

A comparison of how two design systems handle the humble text component

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Mischief & Craft - A design system is what it does

matthenry.fyi

A comparison of how two design systems handle the humble text component

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Not trying to *actually* you so I genuinely apologize if it comes off that way.

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NDS guys at Login (only distinguishing because there are still great people at login) but yeah. The login.gov account vs. id.me is an unfortunate artifact of Login not supporting the kind of ID verification IRS needed at the time. I think all involved would’ve preferred using Login from the jump.

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No worries! I appreciate the summary. I still think whatever the new USWDS regime does will be shadcn-based, and setting aside the accessibility and performance concerns, making gov UIs look like every SaaS startup from 2022 would be a massive reorientation of what and whom gov services are for.

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Do you have a deck or anything you can share from this? I’d be interested to see it.

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The people who know how to stop things like this from happening used to work right down the hall before they were all fired or driven out.

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This is obviously hilarious but it also shows what happens if you ship something without ever showing it to a real user first.

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Thanks, Forest. That means a lot.

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Amanda C 🥄 @amandaesque.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Viewpoint-based removal of comments in a (limited) public forum remains illegal whether or not you give a warning about it in a markdown file. github.com/uswds/uswds/...

A github diff shows the text "Any posts or comments that the admin determine are not productive will be removed, and users who make multiple such posts or comments will be banned." being added to the USWDS code of conduct.

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

ABSOLUTELY SCREAM CACKLING at this search prompt and image combo on the new trashbasket america.gov

Screenshot of the america.gov website. A search box offers an example prompt of "How can I invest in my child's future?" over an image of a young ice-staking child sprawled out face-down after falling on a frozen pond.

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026

Wrote about the decline and fall of SCOTUSblog, which used to be the single best resource for Supreme Court stuff, and (thanks to some intervening crimes committed by its co-founder) is now a weird platform for conservative pundits to talk about what a good job the conservative justices are doing

slate.com

It Was the Essential Home of Supreme Court News. Now It’s a Joke. What Happened?

How high-stakes poker brought down a pillar of Supreme Court coverage.

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

Christopher Whitaker @civicwhitaker.com · 29/09/2026

My first read is that like many other NDS websites the real functionality is ‘coming soon’ - I tested a VA disability claim and it directs me to the VA site. It claims to be able to do that in 2027 but that’s a significantly heavier lift than building an LLM wrapper.

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Reposted by Matt Henry 🥄

Websites ‘in jeopardy’ amid U.S. Web Design System takeover, coalition tells GSA

Several civic technologists, civil servants, and concerned citizens signed on to an open letter to GSA leadership and members of congress asking them to protect USWDS as a piece of critical digital infrastructure. I'm proud to be one of them. fedscoop.com/websites-jeo...

fedscoop.com

The letter comes after administration officials changed leadership for the system, implemented new AI tooling, and shut out members of an open-source community.

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Websites ‘in jeopardy’ amid U.S. Web Design System takeover, coalition tells GSA

fedscoop.com

The letter comes after administration officials changed leadership for the system, implemented new AI tooling, and shut out members of an open-source community.

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Thank you for sharing! I so have to emphasize that it's a community effort and a lot of people put a lot of effort into the letter. Also the letter is no longer signable but there will be other ways to show support!

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This is definitely a useful read for understanding what’s happening to USWDS right now. The DOGE alum in charge is pushing “tech first” (if not tech *only*) solutions over the human-centered ones the system was built on bsky.app/profile/donm...

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