If you've spent any time in the tech world, you've likely heard about "web accessibility", or stumbled upon less transpicuous phrases such as "a11y" or "WCAG". This is a good thing, as in earlier years there was little to no regard for making apps and websites accessible. The web was a wild west, and those with any level of disability were left to navigate it in the dark.
While I am delighted to see that accessibility has finally been invited to dinner at the table of design and development, I am concerned that there are groups using it as a device to gain approval from users for the purpose of profit.
Early in my career, I signed on as a developer for a small SaaS shop that was in the middle of overhauling their application to be WCAG 2.1 certified. Implementing the necessary fixes proved to be tedious work, but I was ecstatic to be a part of the push to make a small portion of the web accessible for all. I imagined myself as a blind user, would I be able to use the app to the same degree as I would sighted? Could I navigate this section of the application without a traditional mouse?
After the certification was secured, there was a company celebration. The CEO spoke to the team's accomplishments, and I was disheartened to hear the discourse sway in favor of how the achievement would present the company as more "ethical". Being fully accessible would help us gain an advantage on our competitors. It would siphon more money into the company accounts.
Unfortunately, this perspective on accessibility is growing increasingly common in the tech world. Accessibility advocates often feel that they must present their case for accessibility with a capitalistic flair. "It will be good for business", and "If we don't make the site accessible, we may be sued. Did you hear about the Domino's case?".
The result of a profit driven approach to accessibility is that the implementation is often superficial. Developers are allotted time towards feature development for the able. Accessibility is seen as a technical debt to be corrected when there is down time (the catch is that there will never be down time). It's "important enough to note", but clearly not important enough to be a feature requirement. Buggy third party accessibility widgets are copy pasted into the source code, some phrase about "striving for accessibility in all that we do" is added to the company mission to demonstrate virtue. But this is not good enough.
As developers, designers, product managers, and technology users in general - we must advocate for web accessibility because it is the right thing to do. When we hear profit based arguments, we must combat them. Have we no empathy for the disabled? The elderly? The cognitively impaired? The working mother with a baby in one arm? When we accept lazy attempts at inclusion for profit, we lose sight of what is most important: The web is for all.