New Mar 26, 2026

Accessibility Law of Headlines

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Betteridge’s law of headlines states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. For at least the digital accessibility landscape, I would like to amend it, fork it, whatever it:

Any headline that asserts a thing is accessible is wrong.

Yes, that is a very broad assertion, kind of like the one that inspired it. And yes, it is not a true law.

Instead of calling out specific articles / posts / outlets / authors here, I’ll point to other stuff I’ve written. These posts either explain the functional limits of “accessibility” or they go into more detail about selected claims:

“Atlantis Rising from the Sea” with subheads “World’s scientists rush to North Sea site!” and “Ancient buildings still dot the lost continent, say divers.” Unrelated headlines: “Mystery of the Loch Ness Monster Solved!” “Bizarre! WW2’s best-kept secret — Hitler was a woman!” “Occult Shocker! Ex-witch’s chilling tale of life in a modern coven.” “Weird wedding of this couple…”
Other wrong headlines, though not about accessibility. From the cover of Weekly World News, 26 July 1988. From this author’s collection.

While some authors are well-intentioned, just as often they are marketing chaff from a corporate entity trying to separate you from your money in the guise of helping users. It turns out I’ve also got plenty of examples of those:

I suppose you could acronymify this law, which means you might get more traction adjusting it to Accessibility Law of Headlines, Amirite? just so you can say “ALOHA!” on calls. Nobody wants that, which makes it extra fun.

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