The Other Meaning of Accessible
A product can be perfectly compliant — every screen reader satisfied, every contrast ratio passing, every guideline met — and still be completely out of reach for the person who needs it. When most people hear “accessibility,” they think of the first part: designing for people with disabilities. That work is real, it matters, and I’m not here to relitigate it. There’s a second sense of access that gets far less attention: whether a genuinely good thing is reachable by an ordinary person at all. Not “is the interface usable,” but “can you get this in the first place.” By that measure, most high-quality services quietly fail. The best interview coaching runs two hundred dollars an hour and books weeks out. The best of almost anything is gated — by price, by availability, by the unspoken assumption that excellence is for people who can pay for it. ...