The Web Wasn't Built for Everyone. It Should Be.
There's a moment most developers never experience: watching someone navigate your website with a screen reader.
The carefully crafted interface you spent weeks perfecting? It becomes a maze of "button, button, link, image, image, button" with no context. That elegant modal? A trap with no escape. Your beautiful hero section? Invisible.
This isn't a technical problem. It's an empathy problem.
We Build for Ourselves
Here's an uncomfortable truth: most of us build websites for people who experience the web exactly like we do. We test by clicking around with a mouse. We eyeball the design on our high-resolution monitors. We assume everyone processes information the way we do.
But 1.3 billion people globally live with significant disabilities. In the US alone, over 61 million adults have a disability that impacts daily activities. These aren't edge cases. These are your users, your customers, your neighbors.
When we build inaccessible websites, we're not just failing compliance checkboxes. We're telling a significant portion of humanity: "This wasn't made for you."
The Empathy Gap
The problem isn't that developers are callous. Most genuinely want to build good things. The problem is distance.
If you've never:
- Tried to book a medical appointment while legally blind
- Filled out a job application using only a keyboard
- Attempted to read a CAPTCHA with dyslexia
- Navigated a checkout flow during a migraine
...then you simply don't know what you don't know.
Accessibility failures feel abstract until they're personal. A missing alt tag is just a linting warning until it's your grandmother unable to understand what product she's buying. A low-contrast button is a design choice until it's your coworker squinting through eye strain after cancer treatment.
Empathy Is a Practice, Not a Feeling
Caring about accessibility isn't enough. You have to operationalize it.
This means building habits: testing with a keyboard before you call something done, running automated scans as part of your workflow, occasionally turning on a screen reader just to hear what your site sounds like.
It means involving people with disabilities in your process—not as an afterthought, but as valued perspectives that catch what automated tools miss.
It means treating accessibility as a core feature, not a remediation project you'll get to "when there's time."
The Business Case Is Real, But It's Not the Point
Yes, accessible websites reach more customers. Yes, they perform better in search rankings. Yes, they reduce legal risk—ADA lawsuits have increased dramatically, and new regulations are tightening.
But if your only motivation for accessibility is avoiding lawsuits or capturing market share, you'll always do the minimum. You'll check boxes rather than solve problems.
The real shift happens when you internalize a simple idea: the web is for everyone, or it fails its fundamental promise.
Start Where You Are
You don't need to achieve perfect accessibility overnight. But you do need to start.
Run a scan on your site today. Pick one issue—just one—and fix it. Then fix another tomorrow. Build the muscle memory of noticing barriers and removing them.
Talk to your team about accessibility not as a burden but as craft. The same attention to detail that makes code elegant and designs beautiful can make experiences inclusive.
And when you find yourself making excuses—"our users don't have disabilities," "we'll add accessibility in v2," "the timeline doesn't allow for it"—pause. Ask yourself who you're leaving out. Put a face to it.
The Web We Build Reflects Who We Are
Every inaccessible form, every missing heading structure, every auto-playing video without captions is a small statement: "We didn't think of you."
Every accessible feature is a different statement: "You belong here too."
The web has always been about connection—about making information and services available to anyone with a browser. Accessibility isn't a feature we add. It's the original promise, finally kept.
Build like someone's using your site differently than you do. Because they are.