Comment by _heimdall
16 hours ago
Why? What does it add that accessibility features don't cover? And of there's a delta there, why have everyone build WebMCP into their sites rather than improve accessibility specs?
16 hours ago
Why? What does it add that accessibility features don't cover? And of there's a delta there, why have everyone build WebMCP into their sites rather than improve accessibility specs?
Because, thinking bigger picture, having an AI assistant acting on your behalf might be more effective than slow navigation via accessibility features?
I get the wider point that if accessibility features were good enough at describing the functionality and intent then you wouldn't need a separate WebMCP.
So what does WebMCP do that accessibility doesn't?
Seems to me, at cursory reading, it's around providing a direct js interface to the web site ( as oppose to DOM forms ).
Kind of mixing an API and a human UI into one single page.
Navigation shouldn't be slow when using accessibility features though. The browser already prices the accessibility tree with full context and semantics of what is on the page and what can be interacted with.
I take the same issue when MCP servers are created for CLI tools. LLMs are very good at running Unix commands - make sure your tool has good `--help` docs and let the LLM figure it out just like a human would.
I guess I was asking - assuming that WebMCP isn't totally misguided - which of course is an assumption - is there anything that current accessibility standards can learn from WebMCP - ie why did they feel the need to create it?
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