We Forgot How to Build for Everyone

The open web isn't dying — it's being quietly abandoned by the very people who once promised to protect it.

Last winter I spent two weeks rewriting a small accessibility library that had broken across three major browsers. Nothing dramatic — just label associations and focus management, the unglamorous plumbing of the web. But the deeper I dug, the more I realized the breakage wasn't a bug. It was the predictable result of five years of specification drift, vendor indifference, and a collective shrug from the people who build the platforms two billion people rely on every day.

The Browser Was Never Just a Window