UX Review: 2.21 Consider the experience in non-visual browsers and interfaces

[ehorrell]

NOT A PROPOSAL

Discussion to continue here on Github in comments with a due date of November 1, 2025.

Revised Guideline (Current)

2.21 Consider the experience in non-visual browsers and interfaces
Ensure visitors who access your content using non-visual methods have an equal experience.

Success Criterion: Alternative interactions
Support non-visual browsing methods and various non-graphical ways to interact with content. This includes anything from assistive technologies to voice agents. Consider and provide working alternatives to visual interfaces.

Previous Guideline

2.21 Consider the impact of visitors using non-visual browsers

Success Criterion: Alternative interactions
Support speech browsing and other non-graphical ways to interact with content that provide alternatives to a visual interface.

Discussion points

Suggestion to cross-link to WCAG

[systemstree]

Should we also discuss the sustainability of non-graphical ways to interact with content? Since GenAI is heavily used now with such technologies, it would be great if we talk about the balance between accessibility and sustainability here.

[mgifford]

Thanks @ehorrell and @systemstree. Trying to build on this, the web is increasingly becoming non-visual. Whether people are pulling up information from Alexa or Google Home, or even Reader mode in their browser. Aural interfaces are increasingly important and can be quite effective. Both search and AI are important non-visual web consumers too. I've talked about accessibility as a way to make your site future-compatible. Well, the future is here.

Joke: Who is the world's richest blind user?

Answer: Google.

Now with AI vision this may no longer apply, however it is interesting.

With AI, I came up with this:

2.21 Consider the experience in non-visual browsers and interfaces
Support non-visual browsing methods, non-graphical interactions, and AI-mediated access to content. This includes screen readers and other assistive technology, voice and conversational agents, and generative AI systems that interpret or interact with website content.

Success Criterion: Alternative interactions
Provide functionally equivalent alternatives to visual interfaces and ensure that machine-readable and semantic structures. Enable consistent comprehension, navigation, and interaction.

[hidde]

I'm not sure about the proposed revisions in the opening post and @mgifford's suggestion: they add a number of specific types of tools, without actually saying which tools. How can someone testing the SC know if they've done sufficient testing, which list of tools would they follow? Keeping it more abstract/less specific would avoid this question, people can then follow/test it with their own list of tools (see the concept of accessibility supported in WCAG).

Besides, I wonder in what way does this SC support sustainability?

I can see how this SC supports accessibility, but as WCAG already covers that, for instance in 1.1.1, 1.3.1 and 4.1.3, I think that alone is not a good reason to have this SC (and likely a reason to not have it, overlap isn't helpful for various reasons).

[codewordcreative]

Encouraging AI-supported browsing would not be conducive to sustainability (or security and privacy, for that matter).

The AI-generated proposal is also too specific about technologies for my taste (in typical "let's produce a list" fashion!) - we don't want to tie the spec down to a particular time period. That's why the original is more vague.