Here's the uncomfortable truth about accessibility work.
Most of us spend our days managing complexity that shouldn't exist.
We've become professional translators, explaining to others how to navigate systems that we've all built wrong in the first place. And we're quite good at it.
Your team keeps adding things. Another component library. An extra plugin to "fix" the broken patterns from last quarter. This is because adding feels productive. It feels safe. Heck, it is safe! No one gets fired for shipping a new feature.
But removing things?
That's dangerous. You might break something. Someone might complain.
So you pile on features, adding more weight to the system with each one. Before long, you've got three different date pickers, two conflicting focus management systems and a modal that no one remembers building but everyone's afraid to touch.
And now things get weird.
The more complex a product becomes, the more valuable accessibility specialists become. We're the ones who can navigate the mess. We know which workarounds to use, which bugs to document, which battles to fight.
The truth is there's job security in persistent problems. The better we get at managing complexity, the more indispensable we are. But it's a perverse incentive. Simplification might actually eliminate our role.
Meanwhile, users with disabilities are the ones paying for all this. They're the ones using these complex products, trying to move through things that should have been straightforward.
Your team documents workarounds. Your specialists firefight. Everyone gets burned out. And the product never actually gets simpler.
Maybe the bravest thing we can do is subtract. I dare say, cut ruthlessly, but I know that's heresy.
Or at least admit we're part of the problem we claim to solve.