Accessibility Statements Now Have a Home on GitHub
By Jan Maarten (@janmaarten-a11y)
Jan Maarten (he/him) is a designer and accessibility specialist living on unceded Duwamish lands. He brings two decades of experience across product design, brand, strategy, and leadership. At GitHub, he bridges design and engineering to improve accessible products, evolve design-system infrastructure, and create resources for the wider design community—including the open-source GitHub Annotation Toolkit.
Why Accessibility Statements Matter
Accessibility statements are a simple but powerful way to communicate an organization's commitment to digital inclusion. They tell users what accessibility standards a product meets, what known barriers exist, and how to get help or report an issue. Historically, these statements have been scattered across organizational websites with little consistency in format or placement.
A Central Home on GitHub
GitHub is now providing a dedicated home for accessibility statements, making it easier for organizations to publish, maintain, and share these documents in a consistent, version-controlled environment. As accessibility regulations tighten worldwide—including compliance deadlines under the European Accessibility Act throughout 2025 and 2026—having trustworthy, up-to-date statements is increasingly a legal and ethical requirement, not just good practice.
What This Means in 2026
With the European Accessibility Act now fully in force and similar legislation emerging across other regions, organizations face growing pressure to document their accessibility efforts transparently. Hosting accessibility statements on GitHub offers several advantages:
- Version control tracks changes and preserves an auditable history of accessibility commitments.
- Open collaboration allows teams—and, where appropriate, the public—to review and improve statements over time.
- Consistency across projects supports a unified, recognizable format that users can trust.
- Integration with developer workflows makes accessibility a natural part of the product lifecycle.
Looking Ahead
This initiative reflects a broader shift toward treating accessibility documentation as first-class engineering output. By giving accessibility statements a reliable, collaborative home, GitHub aims to lower the barrier for organizations to be transparent about their accessibility—and to help ensure users can find the information they need.
Jan Maarten is a designer and accessibility specialist at GitHub. Learn more about his work on the open-source GitHub Annotation Toolkit.
via GitHub AI Blog