We've all come across some things in modern life that have no solutions:
- Traffic during rush hour. No matter how early or how late you leave for or from work, others had the same bright idea so you all end up in traffic.
- Losing a sock in the dryer. I swear, I keep a drawer of unpaired socks just for this.
- Forgetting why you walked into a room. My brain just draws a blank. It happens.
- Small things get stuck between couch cushions. Pennies, batteries, napkins and sometimes the remote control. And you look for it for hours cussing.
Some of these problems, like losing a sock, are more of a nuisance. Others you really wished had a solution, like traffic.
Nevertheless, they don't. They're problems without solutions. You just have to push through.
Most problems though have solutions.
We either don't like that solution or we think the problem will go away if we ignore it long enough.
On the one hand, we don't like the solution because it would mean work. We don't like work.
Or we don't like the solution because it's risky. It might not work. We don't like risk either.
On the other hand, we like to think that ignoring a problem makes it go away. That implies we don't think the problem is important enough, interesting enough or urgent enough.
So we avoid the problem and everyone who thinks it's a problem to begin with.
Sometimes, yes. The solution means hard work and is risky. We might ignore it and it'll go away on its own.
That rarely happens.
Some problems just compound the longer you ignore them. Accessibility is such a problem that absolutely won't disappear no matter how long you ignore it.
It's a problem that ticks a lot of boxes. It's important, urgent, interesting to solve and high-risk to ignore. It also has a real human cost.
And it has solutions.
You just have to actually care enough to build them.