You know it's broken. We all do.
You know that form doesn't quite work with the keyboard.
You know you removed the focus outline. You even planned to replace it with "something better" and you knew you'd never get to it.
You know having "Screenshot.png" is as bad a image description as they come.
You know you can't drag and drop to upload a file unless you have a mouse.
Some call these a backlog. It's a list of things you plan to get back to eventually and solve. In an accessibility audit, these are called known issues.
And usually, this list spirals out of control. You're just never going to fix everything. Instead, you hope to train your users that these are known issues.
A know issue is when someone who relies on a keyboard can't complete checkout. It's when someone using a screen reader can't submit their job application. Or someone with motor difficulties just closes your app and goes to a competitor.
Some have workaround, some are just dead ends. No, you can't use the product like that. No, there's no other way. Sorry. Yes, yes, we know about it. It's a known issue.
Over time, these known issues become your product. They're no longer bugs in the system. They just become the system. That joke about "it’s not a bug, it’s a feature" stopped being funny when it became an accessibility strategy.
But it is a bug nevertheless.
Even if people are used to them, it doesn't make it right. The problem is you've trained yourself to accept it as such. That voice in your head that says "we'll circle back to that" gets quieter each time. Eventually, you stop hearing it altogether.
And this is what keeps me up at night. If you're actively ignoring the problems you know about, what are you missing? What unknown issues exist that you haven't even discovered yet?