Unless you put in the work, you'll never learn.
Still on the topic of house renovations, I'm not what you'd call a handy man. I can hold a hammer and most of the time I won't hit my fingers while aiming for the nail. I can paint a wall, but it won't be pretty. I have no idea about what goes underneath the fresh coat of paint or what a wall actually looks like before you can start working on it.
I've never built one. Until this week. We put up a dividing wall in one of the rooms. I bought the stones, carried them upstairs, cut them to size, glued them to each other, aligned them, plastered the wall and it's now ready for paint.
I have cuts and bruises to prove all that and my muscles hurt.
But I now know how to build a wall. I know the amount of work that goes into it, what I need to buy, what I should look out for, what problems I can face. I could probably build another one from scratch by following a list of steps. And then another one without looking at the list. Then I could probably teach you how to do it.
When I started in accessibility, it was the same story.
I didn't know much about disabilities. I didn't know what a screen reader was, how to use one or why you'd need it. I didn't know what ARIA was. I didn't know the importance of semantic HTML. I thought I could just eye colour contrast and that'd be good enough.
But now I know better. I still use lists to help me in my daily work and that's okay. Because I could teach you how to use them to.
But unless you put in the work, you'll never learn.