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.
So I’ve started thinking of accessibility as three locks, and a thing is only reachable when all three are open. Availability — is it there the moment you need it, not by appointment, not nine to five, not only in the right city. Affordability — is the price approachable, or does it silently exclude most of the people it would help. Quality — because cheap and everywhere is easy if you’re willing to make the thing worse; the hard version keeps the quality and drops the barriers.
That last lock is the whole game. Anyone can make a worse product cheaper. The work is delivering the expensive outcome at the approachable price.
It’s what we’ve spent the last year on at Revarta. We cut our prices. We made it something you practice on your phone, on the go, instead of only at a desk. We introduced unlimited plans, so the number of reps is never the thing standing between you and being ready. Each one opens a lock — cost, place, quantity — on a kind of preparation that used to be reserved for people who could afford a private coach.
Compliance asks whether someone can use your product. The broader question is whether they can reach it at all. A thing is only truly accessible when no one good is shut out — not by a disability you failed to design for, and not by a price you never thought to question.