[jscholes]

> if there's a link on a website that the screen reader cannot see, a blind person won't report that as an accessibility issue because they won't even know it's there.

This is highly variable. As a screen reader user who works in accessibility with a software engineering focus, I don't consider a test to be complete if I've only evaluated what the page exposes to the accessibility API. Assessing the rendered DOM by hand, testing on different viewports where controls may be slightly or completely different, etc., are just as critical to the testing process as trying to simply use the page. But, I recognise that there are many accessibility testers out there without such a technical focus, and it is true to say that they may gloss over something if it is completely missing in the accessibility tree.