Pragmatism and Accessibility

Question

At what point does accessibility become non-pragmatic? and what is that shady gray area dictated by?

Answer 1

It depends on your software. Making a word processor accessible is a lot more necessary then making the latest first person shooter accessible. As a blind computer user I get angry if Microsoft Office doesn't work, but don't care if I can't navigate the menus in Quake III. It also depends on your customers: if you are selling to the government than accessibility is going to be mandated (at least in America). Accessibility isn't mandated for most non-governmental companies, though, so you can get away with as much or as little accessibility as your conscience, time restraints, and budget force you to implement.

Answer 2

My guess is that as legislatures catch up, we are not far from having legally mandated accessibility requirements in the same way that physical buildings, workplaces, and the like have to adhere to accessibility requirements. Such legislation will often eliminate the doubts.

Since accessibility generally means providing the services to as many people as possible, no site is universally accessible, even by merit of not covering all languages. It's common to stick to a few main languages or countries, though it's good to design for expansion (the way that Amazon does).

As for disabilities, sometimes it depends on the site and the services it provides.

I personally think that as the population ages, it makes sense to address low-vision customers who use assistive devices, so websites that are text based and low on flash/scripts make a lot of sense. That being said, users with small mobile devices have similar needs so you can catch two birds.

Answer 3

There's another kind of anti-pragmatism going on:

Firms scrambling to comply with the letter of the law (e.g. 508), and throwing together whatever low-hanging fruit they they can find, just to be on the safe side, but not actually applying any resources to implementing accessibility as a design solution.

Peppering your html with tabindex and aria attributes (which may not even be necessary) can easily make your site no more accessible, or less usable, than doing nothing.

This kind of thing (which is not unusual) certainly strikes me as anti-pragmatic.