October 2026 Accessibility Update

Hey Pinecasters, I’m super excited to announce the release of our October 2026 accessibility update. We’re getting ready to make some noise about our committment to accessibility at Pinecast, and part of that is understanding how well we are doing. While preparing the report, we made a choice: every accessibility finding (that is, every issue that could affect how well a user interacts with our software) either needs to be a deliberate choice made for a good reason, or it’s a bug.

We spent the last two weeks combing through hundreds of thousands of lines of code. We found 200 problems. 11 were for features that are currently under construction or not yet live, 18 were flagged as deliberate choices, and one is pending additional changes. 170 problems were fixed.

I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of all of the individual changes that were made, but we took a lot of time to get things polished, and I want to highlight some of what shipped.

For folks who don’t use a pointing device

Everything that works with a mouse should work with a keyboard.

• We fixed numerous issues that prevented you from tabbing through the UI in a sensible way. In thirteen places, we fixed the browser focus jumping back to the top of the page: to all the folks that have been bitten by issues like this, we’re terribly sorry for the frustration.
• Ten types of controls were hard or impossible to use without a mouse. It’s now easier to use the site builder, analytics, audio players, and our pricing pages.
• Eleven different parts of pinecast.com didn’t make it clear what was selected as you tabbed through the page. We now rigorously test that each and every control that can be focused shows that it’s focused.

For folks who use a screen reader

While good, we often didn’t go far enough to help screen readers understand exactly what users were interacting with. Almost seventy different parts of Pinecast were updated to make screen reader support world-class.

• Everything that you can interact with—from buttons to text boxes to sliders—all now carry information needed for screen readers to understand them correctly. That accounted for 33 of the problems fixed.
• It’s now easier to access our support chat, which had been hidden in some cases.
• The old, awful calendar control is gone. We’re so sorry it took so long to replace this.
• Titles, headings, and landmarks on the page are now correctly structured and ordered. It should be a lot easier to get around.
• When something happens, it’ll be announced—be it a save, edit, or delete.

For folks with low vision or color blindness

We looked at colors, sizes, and how browsers zoom in.

• Everything is much higher-contrast. We’ve made a ton of changes around how controls like buttons, charts, and focus outlines around the site look.
• The site builder has better color pallettes that meet minimum contrast requirements. If you use a podcast website preset that you haven’t customized, your site automatically picks up the color changes.
• For places where color differentiates different kinds of information, we now use other details like different shapes or textures.
• If you zoom in or use a large text setting on your device, our pages look better and avoid requiring you to scroll horizontally.

For folks with sensitivity to motion or need a little extra time

We fixed twelve problems across our properties.

• “Reduce motion” settings now affect 100% of Pinecast—no unexpected transitions or animations.
• Notifications don’t disappear on their own: you won’t see things disappear as soon as your eyes land on them.
• Tooltips now work for folks who only use a keyboard as well. No hidden information.

For folks who are deaf and hard of hearing

Podcasting is an audio medium, but we’ve invested and continue to invest in transcripts.

• Transcripts are now on by default. You can opt in or out of transcripts on a per-episode basis.
• All web players now link to transcripts when they’re available. This comes in addition to captioning support, which already existed.
• The podcast playlist player now shows captions in full.

The curb-cut effect

The best part of accessibility support is that everyone benefits, not just the folks that the improvements were designed to help.

• Any difficult-to-reverse decision (deletions, subscription changes, etc.) now have a confirmation step.
• Lots of places where errors happened without much explanation now do a much better job of explaining what went wrong. Fixing the error for low-vision users made the errors better for all users.
• Semantic changes to podcast websites better follow web best practices, which can make it easier for search engines and other crawlers to index your content.

For your listeners, too

These improvements aren’t just on the pages you as a podcaster see. We’ve fixed the pages your listeners see as well.

• Our site builder now recommends improved colors when you choose custom options that aren’t high enough contrast to meet web accessibility guidelines. We do our best to suggest not just a good color, but tell you which color setting is the best one to change.
• Podcast websites saw improvements to the markup, making them friendlier to screen readers and folks who use features like “Reader mode”.
• Embeddable players and subscription links have better descriptions on controls, have better contrast, and work better with the keyboard.
• Show notes keep their formatting and language, making them read better with a screen reader.

Not just a one-off release

We wrote tests that check the accessibility of every page on Pinecast. If something changes that affects accessibility, we have an exhaustive suite that will flag the problem and require changes before it can be shipped to you. Across all of our properties, we’ve added almost 40K lines of code to test for accessibility, covering things like the contrast of the color pallettes we use in light and dark mode, the colors we offer in the site builder, that every control has focus rings for folks using their keyboard to tab through the UI, and more.

What’s next

1. More automated testing is on the way: our improvements aren’t worth it if we don’t stay ahead of the curve when it comes to accessibility.
2. The tip jar is going to see a big UI update soon, and we’re excited to help ensure your listeners who require accommodations have a great experience while using it.
3. We’ll be publishing a formal report with the full details of accessibility at Pinecast.