After 40 years in tech, I've watched computers evolve from punch cards and text terminals to sophisticated, interactive multimedia experiences. And as they get more sophisticated, they naturally become more complex. We're not just reading text and typing in a response, we're interacting with content through clicks, scrolls, taps, pinches, slides, and gestures, and that content is also interacting back with us in similarly complex ways. This is all very cool and engaging, but it has the unfortunate side effect of raising the bar for entrance.
Consider These People's Experiences
Stefan has ADHD and dyslexia. Dense text blocks, poor font choices, and confusing navigation make sites nearly unusable for him.
Lexie has color blindness. When a form uses only red/green to indicate errors and success, she can't tell what's wrong.
Elias has low vision, a hand tremor, and mild memory issues. Tiny click targets, disabled zoom, and complex multi-step processes lock him out.
The Legal and Moral Implications
In 1990, The United States passed the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure "places of public accommodation" were accessible to people with disabilities. In 1996, the Department of Justice expanded that by stating that websites were effectively "public accommodations." What's missing is a formal technical standard for commercial sites. But don't let that ambiguity fool you.
- Courts are consistent. From Target (2008) to Domino's (2019), rulings confirm websites must be accessible.
- Settlements set the standard. Nearly every ADA web settlement requires WCAG 2.1 AA compliance. It's the de facto benchmark.
- State laws add teeth. California's Unruh Act allows statutory damages per violation.
- Litigation is climbing. Roughly 2,500 federal lawsuits in 2024, up 40% in 2025.
This is fundamentally about human dignity. It's about ensuring that a person with a disability can independently access their bank account, apply for a job, or order groceries online without needing to call someone, ask a family member for help, or simply give up and go elsewhere.
I've watched demos of users with disabilities navigating poorly designed sites. They have to struggle with workarounds that often end up in failure. Their only option is to give up and move on. We force this on them through careless design.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Here's what the data tells us:
- 1.3 billion people worldwide live with significant disabilities
- 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. have some form of disability
- 95% of website home pages have detectable accessibility failures
- 73% of people with disabilities have abandoned services or products due to accessibility barriers
- $490 billion in disposable income is held by people with disabilities
How We Fix It
You don't need to be an accessibility expert to make things better. The simple first step is to understand the problem, and when you do, start making incremental changes.
Keyboard navigation. One of the most common accessibility failures I see online is the lack of support for keyboard navigation. You should be able to load a webpage and navigate it without a mouse. Check out your websites. Set your mouse aside, load your webpage, and start navigating around by just using the keyboard. Can you navigate? Can you tell where you are? Do you get trapped anywhere? You can easily fix this by using proper semantic HTML elements, ensuring every interactive element has a visible focus indicator, and making sure everything follows a logical order on the page.
Text contrast. Look at the text on your page. Can you easily read all of the text? How about the text on the buttons? How about the little disclaimers and links to your privacy statement? Did you kind of gray it out because it wasn't that important? You can easily fix this by running your page through a tool like WAVE from WebAim.org, which flags contrast issues across your entire page. It's also a pretty good overall accessibility checker.
Image alt text. Look at your images. Are you conveying information through them? If so, have you locked out a blind person? You can easily fix this by adding alt text that describes what the image conveys, not just what it shows. If it's a complex image, I use AI to summarize it. It works like a dream!
The Curb-Cut Effect
A really nice side effect of building in accessibility is that it actually ends up helping everyone! In the 1970s, activists pushed for curb cuts—those small cutout ramps at street corners. They were designed for wheelchair users. But who benefits today? Parents with strollers. Travelers with rolling luggage. Delivery workers with hand trucks. Runners who don't want to break stride.
The same principle applies to digital accessibility.
- Captions were created for deaf users. Now they help people in noisy gyms, quiet libraries, and anyone learning a new language.
- Voice controls were designed for those who can't use their hands. Now millions use Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant daily.
- Dark mode reduces eye strain for users with light sensitivity. Now it's a standard preference for late-night browsing or just avoiding screen fatigue.
When we design for disabilities, we make things better for everyone.
The Bottom Line
Accessibility isn't a nice-to-have feature. Accessibility is a legal and moral imperative that benefits you as much as it benefits visitors to your websites. It's the recognition that the web should work for everyone. Small changes make a huge difference. A visible focus indicator. Sufficient color contrast. A logical tab order. These aren't heroic efforts; they're basic craft.
This is the first in a series on web accessibility. Join me for future posts where we will cover the legal landscape, developer essentials, and testing strategies.