Remember the Royal British Army studying the wrong planes in World War II? And how most products do the same thing with users with disabilities?
If you haven't read it, here's the short version. The absence of complaints isn't proof that everything's fine.
That's survivorship bias. You study what's in front of you and forget to ask what's missing. It's a theme that shows up everywhere from business, medicine and design to web accessibility.
So what's the fix?
Seems counter-intuitive, but you have to go looking for those missing planes.
In practice, this means stopping to ask who isn't using your product and why.
Here are a few places you could start.
- Run an accessibility audit with free tools like Axe or Wave. They'll likely surface issues you can't easily see yourself. They're not perfect by any means, but they'll show you where the gaps are.
- Test with real users. Nothing replaces watching someone use your product.
- Look at your analytics differently. Low task completion or short session times can all be signals that something's broken for someone.
The data you need exists. It's just not in the numbers you've been looking at.