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journal / a11y-cat-bounded-ai-assist

A11Y-Cat: I was interested in AI, but only once I had fenced it in properly

A11YAIWeb Apps
Carla G. December 16, 2025 Updated April 17, 2026 1 min read

AI in accessibility can be useful, but it becomes sloppy very fast when people let it wander into judgement. I was not interested in that. I was interested in bounded help: summarising, explaining, grouping, drafting, and supporting the tester without pretending the model had become the compliance authority.

Extension AI Assist panel

That is roughly where A11Y Cat landed. The extension keeps AI assist optional and local-device oriented, and the older assistant path is documented with bounded actions, structured output contracts, session tokens, allowlists, and grounding rules. That is the opposite of free-form hand waving.

What I like about this is that it treats AI as a constrained layer on top of evidence, not as a substitute for evidence. Deterministic scanning still matters. Manual review still matters. Contracts still matter. The AI layer only becomes interesting once those other foundations are already in place.

I think that is the only kind of AI accessibility work worth taking seriously right now.

Documentation trail

  • README.md
  • LOCAL_ASSISTANT.md
  • TECHNICAL_GUIDE.md