Self‑Taught, Not Self‑Neglected: Blue Beanie Day Tips for Indie Developers

#webdev #a11y #performance #discuss

Sunday, November 30th 2025, marks the 18th annual Blue Beanie Day. Okaaaaay, why is this relevant for inclusion?

Blue Beanie Day reminds us to pay attention to web standards in order to create sites that load faster, reach more users, and cost less to maintain. Accessibility is part of these standards.

The web was designed with accessibility in mind.

Exactly 10 years ago, Tumblr user BlueBeanieDay posted:

It’s a thrilling time to create web content and experiences, as more new coders join our ranks, using more new tools and frameworks to create more new kinds of content, experience, and interactivity. But in this environment that moves faster than reason, it’s too easy for our community—and the breathless media that reports on it—to lose sight of vital basics.
Progressive enhancement and accessible, semantic markup aren’t optional extras. They’re the foundation of a web that works for all people, of whatever ability, on whatever devices they choose to access it.

All of the above still stands true today. Web design and development have become popular career paths, with many emerging self-taught talents. Being self-taught myself, I know the pros and cons.

Pro: With no degree or anything to show, you really have to prove your skills through your skills.
Con: You only learn what you choose to learn. Many things can slip in between the grooves of your keyboard like crumbs, so close yet always eluding your fingertips.

You don’t learn what you don’t know, and with a severe lack of web accessibility curriculum standardisation, accessibility is unfortunately most often part of this category.

Even formal education isn’t a guarantee that you will know the basics of accessibility. Luckily, an increasing number of teachers and boot camps make a conscious effort to include web accessibility in their curriculum, but that remains an individual effort.

So let’s take Blue Beanie Day as an occasion to master the basics. I know, I know, plain HTML5 is not as sexy as the latest release cutting-edge tech stack (unless your name is Manuel). But it’s important to understand (and honor) the blueprints today’s web is built on:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with other groups and standards bodies, has established technologies for creating and interpreting web-based content. These technologies, which we call “web standards,” are carefully designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users while ensuring the long-term viability of any document published on the Web.
Designing and building with these standards simplifies and lowers the cost of production, while delivering sites that are accessible to more people and more types of Internet devices. Sites developed along these lines will continue to function correctly as traditional desktop browsers evolve, and as new Internet devices come to market.

WaSP - The Web Standards Project

Web Standards are what keep the web usable, independent of browser and device. Not only now but for the next decades to come.

*Digital accessibility is an integral part of web standards. *

The web was built on the idea that anyone, on any device, should be able to read, navigate, and contribute.

One of the biggest players in Web Standards today is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). That abbreviation rings a bell, right? Maybe because they have published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) since 1999. Now we are feverishly anticipating version 3.0, growing from the original 14 guidelines to 85 success criteria grouped into 13 guidelines.

Take the blue beanie as a reminder to start small, but think big.

Today, spend a few minutes checking one of your own pages with an accessibility tester (WAVE, axe dev tools, or Google Lighthouse). Fix the most obvious issues: missing image descriptions, hierarchical heading order, and sufficient colour contrast. Then share what you learned on social media with the hashtag #BlueBeanieDay. By turning a single day into a habit, we keep web standards alive for the next generation of developers and designers.