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A comment on Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility. Parent comment

Re:Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about ac... by bnralt on Monday March 18, 2024 @03:03PM (#39748530)
What I dislike about all the comments here saying something similar is that it suggests that empathy only go in one direction. I sometimes run into situations where society isn’t set up for my needs in a particular way (for personal reasons, I won’t go into specific details). But my reaction isn’t “society should do whatever it takes to remove this issue I’m experiencing, no matter the cost.” I know that doing more to improve my personal situation is going to insure a cost that means that others are going to have less of something. None of this is free.

Where that line gets drawn is open for debate, but a lot of comments seem to be livid that people are suggesting the line should be drawn somewhere. Life is about compromise, and trying to do the most with finite resources. Understanding that tradeoffs exist is a basic requirement for creating a functioning society.

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Re:Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about ac... by JadeNB on Monday March 18, 2024 @03:36PM (#39748976)
> But my reaction isn’t “society should do whatever it takes to remove this issue I’m experiencing, no matter the cost.”

I think few people have that reaction, and it's invidious to treat the statement "everyone should always think about accessibility" (true, for a properly charitably interpretation of "everyone" and "always") as equivalent to the statement "everyone's product should be equally accessible to everyone" (false and impossible).

The problem usually isn't that a reasonable, good-faith effort at accessibility isn't a perfect solution, but rather that no effort at accessibility is made at all, and that it's often regarded as an acceptable response to tell people that acknowledging their existence is too inconvenient. That's what's outrageous, and it should be made as universally socially unacceptable as any other societal taboo.

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