Journal
Latest posts, notes, and project write-ups.
journal / a11y-cat-keyboard-focus-order-feature-tour
Keyboard and Focus Order is the evidence area for focusable element discovery, sequential tab-stop capture, deterministic focus findings, manual verification, and exportable focus evidence. A list…
journal / a11y-cat-dashboard-feature-tour
The Dashboard is the reviewer’s starting point. It tells you what was scanned, what evidence exists, whether the current page state is fresh, and what should…
journal / a11y-cat-manual-checks-feature-tour
Manual Checks is the review queue for checks automation cannot safely classify, including tester instructions, expected observations, selectors, and evidence requirements. This section is where the…
journal / a11y-cat-language-mismatch-feature-tour
Language Mismatch reviews declared page language, visible mixed-language evidence, inline language signals, and confidence-bound output. Language detection can get messy quickly, especially with short labels, names,…
journal / a11y-cat-scan-results-feature-tour
Scan Results is the main triage surface. It turns automated WCAG findings, responsive comparison data, and issue evidence into something a reviewer can verify and hand…
journal / a11y-cat-metadata-check-feature-tour
Metadata Check reviews page title, H1/title relationship, canonical URL, social preview metadata, structured data, viewport metadata, and baseline document signals. Good metadata helps people understand where…
journal / my-google-chrome-web-store-submission-prompt
The strict final A11Y Cat Chrome Web Store submission prompt I use to test the MV3 extension package, scanner trust, privacy, documentation, UI, and release process…
journal / a11y-cat-reports-exports-developer-handoff-feature-tour
Reports, Exports, and Developer Handoff turn working evidence into material another person can read, reproduce, archive, and act on. The best accessibility report is not the…
journal / a11y-cat-headings-feature-tour
Headings is the structure review area for ordered outline analysis, visible H1 checks, hidden or empty headings, skipped levels, duplicates, and semantic heading risks. This section…
journal / a11y-cat-alt-text-analysis-feature-tour
Alt Text Analysis reviews image alternatives, decorative image evidence, context-dependent alt quality, and the limits of manual image judgement. Alt text is not just a missing-attribute…
journal / a11y-cat-local-history-comparison-feature-tour
Local History and Comparison answer a practical question: did this page get better, worse, or simply different since the last comparable scan? This is one of…
journal / a11y-cat-broken-links-feature-tour
Broken Links checks visible anchors and classifies same-document, same-origin, cross-origin, valid, broken, skipped, unverified, timeout, restricted, and risky outcomes. A broken link is simple only when…
journal / a11y-cat-screen-reader-review-feature-tour
Screen Reader Review is a Guidepup-supported virtual screen-reader workspace for spoken-output evidence, structured review, diagnostics, and QA handover. The most important thing about this feature is…
journal / making-a11y-cat-trustworthy
What I learned while debugging an accessibility scanner with AI agents, and why evidence matters more than pass/fail theatre.
journal / why-im-not-building-a11y-cat-around-paid-accessibility-apis
A practical look at WAVE API, axe-core, Playwright, Pa11y, IBM Equal Access, and why a local scanner is the more honest foundation for A11Y CAT.
journal / cat-crawler-why-i-built-it-what-i-learned
Why I built Cat Crawler, what it is good at, what it taught me, and the improvements I would make next.
journal / a11y-cat-agents-workflow-best-practices-for-developers
What it takes to use agents without letting the work slip into vague claims, fake certainty, or sloppy release habits.
journal / wordpress-ai-accessibility-reality
A look at the way people are talking about WordPress and AI, and why accessibility still gets flattened or ignored in that conversation.
journal / a11y-cat-25-what-this-project-is-now
A plain account of where the project stands now, what it can actually prove, and where the limits still are.
journal / a11y-cat-24-governing-the-work-as-hard-as-the-code
Why the project started leaning harder on rules, release discipline, and explicit boundaries instead of good intentions.
journal / a11y-cat-23-packaging-and-handoff-tooling
Packaging, release handoff, and build cleanup stopped being side work once the project got big enough to ship properly.
journal / a11y-cat-22-cutting-seams-into-the-runtime
This was probably inevitable. The only question was whether I was going to admit it early enough. By mid-April, A11Y Cat’s runtime had become too large…
journal / a11y-cat-16-language-headings-and-structure
These are the kinds of features that sound small until you try to make them useful on real pages without being annoying. Language, headings, and structure…
journal / a11y-cat-21-measuring-detection-quality
This was a big shift in what “tested” meant to me. There is a difference between testing that a tool runs and testing that it keeps…
journal / a11y-cat-14-the-tool-got-wider-before-it-got-deeper
A lot of the middle history is me adding more surfaces around the main scan because real review work kept asking for them. If I had…
journal / 13-moving-toward-on-device-ai
The later AI work feels much less like “let the model help everywhere” and much more like “if AI is here, it needs to fit inside…
journal / 11-release-vs-test-extension
This is one of those engineering details that sounds boring until you realise it is protecting the truth of the whole release story. One of the…
journal / a11y-cat-20-diagnostics-and-boundaries
This is one of the clearest places where the repo stopped treating failure handling as an afterthought. A lot of browser tools quietly act embarrassed when…
journal / 09-the-extension-pivot
Once I started looking at the extension commits closely, it stopped feeling like “another way to launch the tool” and started feeling like a different phase…
journal / 08-the-bookmarklet-hit-a-wall
This was one of those moments where the main limitation was not the audit logic. It was how the tool reached the page at all. I…
journal / a11y-cat-19-history-baselines-and-local-state
This is where the project starts moving from “run a scan now” toward “use the tool as part of an ongoing review process.” There is a…
journal / 05-my-first-ai-phase-was-still-experimental
I can see the enthusiasm in this stage, but I can also see that I had not settled the trust story yet. The first AI phase…
journal / 04-why-i-spent-so-much-time-on-demos
At first glance it looks like I got distracted by GIFs. Looking back, I think I was trying to make the tool legible. February 16 is…
journal / a11y-cat-18-why-provenance-started-mattering
At some point the output itself was no longer enough. I needed the tool to say where a result came from and how it had been…
journal / a11y-cat-17-why-i-split-issue-types
This was one of the more important mindset changes in the whole repo, and it was not really about UI labels. It was about honesty. For…
journal / a11y-cat-15-contrast-and-honesty
I thought this would be one of the simpler checks. It really was not. Contrast keeps showing up in A11Y Cat’s history because it is one…
journal / a11y-cat-12-getting-honest-about-screen-reader-claims
This part of the history is uncomfortable in a useful way. It shows me correcting a story that was too easy to overread. Screen reader support…
journal / a11y-cat-10-splitting-core-from-delivery
I thought this would be a cleaner refactor than it was. The history makes it pretty obvious that it was important, but not painless. Once the…
journal / a11y-cat-07-why-i-built-a-local-assistant-backend
By the time I came back to AI in April, I seemed much less interested in “chat” and much more interested in keeping the tool from…
journal / a11y-cat-06-when-i-got-serious-about-verification
April 7 feels like the moment I stopped just adding things and started asking what I could actually prove. The commit that stands out most to…
journal / a11y-cat-03-turning-the-panel-into-a-command-tool
This was one of the first moments where the project stopped feeling like a passive report and started feeling like a browser-side helper. One of the…
journal / a11y-cat-02-more-than-an-axe-wrapper
I do not think I realised how much product shape was already in the first version until I looked back properly. When people describe small accessibility…
journal / a11y-cat-01-how-this-started-as-a-bookmarklet
I did not start by building a platform. I started by trying to make the quickest useful thing I could actually run on a page. The…
journal / a11y-cat-release-discipline-and-trust
At some point I realised the release process was not just admin around the edges. It was part of the credibility of the product itself. If…
journal / a11y-cat-bounded-ai-assist
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…
journal / a11y-cat-finding-handoff-and-evidence-bundles
A finding that dies inside a panel is not worth much. Real accessibility work has to move. It gets handed to engineers, QA, delivery people, clients,…
journal / a11y-cat-command-system-for-real-testing
The command surface ended up becoming one of the most practical parts of the project. Instead of one fuzzy assistant prompt box with no real boundaries,…
journal / a11y-cat-screen-reader-support-without-fake-at-testing
This matters to me a lot because accessibility tooling gets dishonest here very quickly. A product runs a scan, says something grand about screen readers, and…
journal / a11y-cat-heading-structure-tells-on-pages
I have always liked heading structure because it gives a page away almost immediately. You can tell when a page has been thought through and you…
journal / a11y-cat-honest-contrast-checking
Contrast checks are easy to make look more certain than they really are. Real pages have gradients, overlays, images, pseudo-elements, shadows, and mixed backgrounds. Once you…
journal / a11y-cat-boring-checks-that-save-audits
People love the flashy parts of accessibility tooling, but some of the most useful checks are the ones that sound ordinary: headings, metadata, language, alt text,…
journal / a11y-cat-self-exclusion-and-route-aware-state
This sounds small until you have seen a tool audit itself into nonsense. The minute you inject a panel, controls, overlays, and support markup into the…
journal / a11y-cat-every-finding-should-show-its-working
A neat list of issues is not enough for me. I wanted provenance. I wanted to know where the result came from, what checked it, what…
journal / a11y-cat-finding-types-and-trust-boundaries
This was one of the biggest turning points in the build. I stopped treating every finding as if it belonged in the same bucket. That is…
journal / a11y-cat-bookmarklet-and-extension-entry-points
One of the earliest decisions in A11Y Cat was not glamorous at all. I did not want a tool that only worked in the perfect setup.…
journal / carlashub-theme
My WordPress theme for this site. Built on Underscores, with Sass, Local, and WooCommerce support where I need it.
journal / seaside-theme
A WordPress theme with Bootstrap, older front-end plugins, and a custom menu walker. Part theme build, part cleanup exercise.
A WordPress theme scaffold built on Underscores and Bootstrap. Useful when a project needs a standard set of templates quickly.
An older Jekyll portfolio site with case studies and a blog. Simple, static, and very much shaped by GitHub Pages constraints.
journal / carlashub-github-io
The repo behind my GitHub Pages portfolio. Jekyll, case studies, a blog, and the usual static-site trade-offs.
journal / print-set-generator
A browser tool that turns one image into a full set of print files and PDFs, without sending anything off the machine.
journal / bookest-app
A browser-based reading tracker that keeps everything in localStorage. Add books, set goals, and keep notes without a backend.
journal / expressjs_demo
Two small Express and EJS exercises: one for routing and templates, one for basic POST handling. Straightforward learning projects.
journal / responsive-units
Using a percentage or a responsive unit to set the font size of the HTML element will mean that the font size will always be 100%…
journal / top-10-essential-widgets-for-ecommerce
A shopping cart displays important data about the product and overall order and really highlights the quality (or lack) of the client service provided by a…