Accessibility Meets Standard Practice

Sometimes what would be best practice to improve accessibility in a pristine space is no longer best practice where standard practices in an existing endeavour mean that accessibility tools are less effective, or break, on what would have been the best practice.

It is an unfortunate reality that articles like my commentary on why developers should use tabs instead of spaces in source code, and the idea of not opening even external links in a new tab in the browser are not very practical in the real world because accessibility tools (and other tools with which accessibility tools interact) do not necessarily play well with what would be the preferred practice to create a level playing field for those with various physical and/or mental/emotional barriers because so much software and configurations are built around the assumptions of what has become standard practice.

Reality is that changing all legacy systems to be more equitable for those with disabilities would be such a mammoth undertaking that the chances of it occuring are so remote that it is not relevant to help challenged folks navigate existing and future realities.

That doesn’t mean that as new frontiers open up that we should not make the effort to be inclusive (although even that gets far too much pushback; it seems caring about others is passé in todays world - this is a terrible mindset, to my mind), but that when we advocate for accessible practices and tools, that we need to pick our battles based on where it will do the most good.

Trying to move an accessibility mountain, instead of building accessible pathways around (and lifts and other assistance) or through the mountain, is energy and mindshare wasted.

I do not like that this is true, but I would rather achieve solutions than achieve nothing in pursuit of the ideal.

I still will not give up on improving accessibility, but I intend to put my efforts towards solutions that have a good chance of success, and actually improving lives, rather than fight for an unachievable perfect environment.