I'm mad as hell!
I've been in a meeting where someone spent almost 10 minutes explaining how screen reader users navigate a page. He obviously never touched a screen reader in his life, yet there he was, confidently explaining disability to everyone in the meeting. The actual expert, who knew that good heading structure is what makes content usable, barely got a word in.
We all had to sit through this meeting where second-hand expertise buried real knowledge under confident bullshit.
These meetings follow a predictable pattern. The loudest voice, usually someone senior who's just discovered accessibility exists, holds court with half-remembered facts from a blog post they skimmed last week. Meanwhile, the person who actually knows what they're talking about stays silent.
Maybe it's the UX researcher who's conducted dozens of sessions with assistive technology users. Perhaps it's someone who actually lives with a disability and understands the real barriers the product creates.
But loud confidence trumps quiet expertise every time.
The accessibility world is particularly prone to this because everyone thinks they understand it. "Just add alt text" becomes the rallying cry of people who've never written meaningful alternative text in their lives. Real experts know it's complicated. But the moment you say "it depends," you start to sound less certain than the person giving oversimplified solutions.
The cost isn't just bad meetings. It's also bad products. When you prioritise confident opinions over actual knowledge, you end up building things that fail real users in predictable ways.
It's hard to control these meetings when you're frustrated by how counter-productive they are. For me, it's hard to speak up. I'm an introvert and I avoid conflict like the plague. So I try to keep things civil.
I usually ask for credentials when I hear opinions. "That's interesting, which screen reader have you used to verify that?" They usually backtrack when they can't answer.
Another option is to redirect the question to real experts. "Before we go further, let's hear from Sarah who's actually conducted usability sessions with screen reader users." This assumes you have a Sarah in the room.
I know, it's difficult. Getting others to shut up and listen.