Who’s Responsible for Accessibility?

Jeff Croft recently wrote a fascinating post and a followup which boiled down to asking where the responsibility for accessibility lies: the web designer, or the software used to access the website? His argument is that "the burden of accommodating the minorities should fall on the operating system and browser makers." This question really dropped a hornet's nest into the community, many of whom quickly and enthusiastically did exactly what you would expect: Accuse Jeff Croft of being insensitive to the needs of disabled users.

Jeff struggled to defend himself, but the problem is that his most vocal critics had missed his point. As he points out, they see accessibility as a black and white issue, where you either provide access or you do not, when it's actually a continuum. No web designer can possibly cover all the bases in the real world. Budgets and deadlines make it impractical to support users that make up less than 1% of your base. That's why we quit supporting NN4.

Jeff actually makes this point very well, discussing how web designers eventually have to draw a line in the sand and say "that's enough." It might be because there's not enough time left in the project, it might be because the client can't or won't pay for the work to be done, or even because the accessibility goals are incompatable with the business goals. Regardless, at the end of the day, it's unreasonable to expect every site to work for every person.

Once again, my web slogan of All Things In Moderation applies. The web designer should make every reasonable effort towards accessibility. But users should understand that no site will be fully accessable, and users who fall into a minority, whether because of a disability or an uncommon browser, should not expect every site to work for them. These users can expect to receive support from their operating system and web browsers, in the form of accessibility tools like magnification, stylesheet overrides, text scaling and screen readers.