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Working with clowns

1 minute read

Sometimes you'll come across clowns.

They'll come up with excuses like:

  • We don't have users with disabilities
  • We've tested with screen readers some time ago and it worked
  • We used a fancy algorithm for this and it guarantees accessibility
  • Our current tech stack makes retrofitting challenging
  • We'd need a lot of code changes to do accessibility
  • The existing design would require a complete overhaul
  • WCAG doesn't apply to the type of product we have
  • We ran an internal accessibility test with our intern and it passed
  • Our users don't use a keyboard to navigate

If you can, stop working with them.

If you can't, stop trying to convince them - you can't. Instead, realise that you don't have to convince everyone. Agree with what they're saying and move on. Left to their own devices, they'll eventually shoot themselves in the foot or worse. You don't want to be around when that happens. Clowns usually find someone else to blame for their shenanigans.

Trust me! This is for your own sanity!

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