Built without you: A parallel history of web accessibility

Four university computers. One network. The first message sent was “LO” – they were trying to type “LOGIN” when the system crashed.

Nobody was thinking about accessibility yet – not because it didn’t matter, but because the network was small, technical, and closed. The assumptions baked in here would scale. The audience would too.

The most important sentence in disability law:

“No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Section 504, Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Forty-five words. No enforcement mechanism. No funding. No plan. But the line had been drawn.

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn gave the internet a universal protocol. On January 1st, every machine on ARPANET switched overnight. The internet could now speak to itself. Universal – in theory.

Instead of memorizing 192.168.1.1, you could type words. There’s no place like 127.0.0.1. The internet was becoming human-readable. For some humans.

Curb cuts. Ramps. Accessible restrooms. Physical spaces finally had rules. The web – still being invented in a Geneva laboratory – wasn’t mentioned.

Tim Berners-Lee launches the first webpage at CERN. Text-based. Linear. Predictable.

It wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Simple interface. Massive reach. The web is no longer experimental. It’s infrastructure. And whatever works – or doesn’t – now affects everyone.

“Don’t make me think.”

A generation of designers learns to simplify interfaces. Reduce friction. Make things easier to use.

But “me” wasn’t everyone. And for a long time, that wasn’t seen as a problem. In many places, it still isn’t.

The web stops being pages and starts being interactions. Profiles. Feeds. Video. Real-time updates.

Complexity explodes. Accessibility becomes harder to maintain – and easier to ignore. The rules exist. The platforms move faster.

The architecture changes.

Perceivable. Operable. Understandable. Robust.

POUR wasn’t just another version. It was the structure everything else would be built on.

A second version of the internet appears: smaller, simpler, stripped down. No heavy JavaScript. Fewer moving parts.

Not designed for accessibility – just designed for smaller screens and worse connections. And yet…

The pattern is clear. The “full” desktop web is powerful, but often unusable. The mobile web is limited, but often easier to navigate.

Screen reader users start choosing the mobile version on purpose. Not because it’s better designed. Because it’s less broken. Twitter’s mobile site becomes a workaround. A simpler interface. Fewer traps.

Accessibility wasn’t missing. It was uneven – and users had to find the version that worked.

In 2024, the Department of Justice finally named a standard. WCAG 2.1 Level AA. By then, WCAG 2.2 had already been published. State and local government websites, with clear deadlines.

On April 20, 2026, those deadlines were pushed back by a year.

In explaining why, the DOJ quoted their own 2017 reasoning – that they had withdrawn earlier rulemaking because they were evaluating whether specific standards were even “necessary and appropriate” to ensure ADA compliance.

They eventually decided yes. Then delayed the deadline anyway.

But the same document makes one thing plain:

“Regardless of the compliance dates, covered entities have an ongoing obligation to ensure that their services, programs, and activities offered using web content and mobile apps are accessible to individuals with disabilities in accordance with their existing obligations under title II of the ADA.”

The standard is delayed. The obligation isn’t. It never was.