First, let me start by saying that this is a good article and sheds light on one of the challenges of accessibility adoption.
All of tools like lighthouse, axe-core etc. run a subset of tests that gives a false sense of security about accessibility. Similarly, tools like Accessibility Insights for Web has a fast-pass option, which does the same thing where it runs a subset of tests to catch the most common issues on a website.
But it does not and cannot(at this moment) catch all the issues that require semantic analysis of a website, like checking that the alt text on an image has meaningful text. For tests like those, a human is needed to perform a comprehensive assessment, something like Accessibility insights for web offers as an Assessment option.
In my opinion, all of the tools are doing one thing good and that is raise awareness about the problems that users with a disability face daily, when trying to use a website. They are making accessibility a must. Tools still needs more work and I feel confident that it will continue to improve. It all kind of comes down to how much time a development team puts in to make their website completely accessible, which ideally every team should budget and plan for.
I would rather not install Chrome at all on my windows machine. I use Brave (a chromium based browser) and with right extensions, I can see myself using the new Chromium based Edge.
I bet that will be the thought process for a lot of general people using browsers. Chrome will loose its market share to Edge for sure.
All of tools like lighthouse, axe-core etc. run a subset of tests that gives a false sense of security about accessibility. Similarly, tools like Accessibility Insights for Web has a fast-pass option, which does the same thing where it runs a subset of tests to catch the most common issues on a website.
But it does not and cannot(at this moment) catch all the issues that require semantic analysis of a website, like checking that the alt text on an image has meaningful text. For tests like those, a human is needed to perform a comprehensive assessment, something like Accessibility insights for web offers as an Assessment option.
In my opinion, all of the tools are doing one thing good and that is raise awareness about the problems that users with a disability face daily, when trying to use a website. They are making accessibility a must. Tools still needs more work and I feel confident that it will continue to improve. It all kind of comes down to how much time a development team puts in to make their website completely accessible, which ideally every team should budget and plan for.