Accessibility in web development tends to show up as a good post rather than a good practice. It earns applause, it makes for a nice talk slide, sometimes it gets framed as a bit of coding heroism. The topic feels worn out — everybody discusses it, and almost nobody ships it.
Then life reminds you why it matters.
A personal reminder
One morning I woke up with a black spot floating in my eye. It moved when I moved, and it would not go away. It turned out to be a posterior vitreous detachment. Why me, why then? No idea. But it landed a point I had been comfortably ignoring: good eyesight is not a permanent feature.
I already knew what the alternative looks like. My grandmother went completely blind from diabetes toward the end of her life. I watched her live in a world that simply did not account for her.
That was the turning point.
From realization to practice
Since then, accessibility has not been a checklist item for me. It is part of the professional DNA:
- At IT Academy, I worked ARIA into the HTML curriculum even though it was not in the plan. It is knowledge that is rarely taught as a fundamental, and it should be.
- At Godel Technologies, I started an internal news channel and a knowledge base for accessibility.
- I gave talks on the subject and shared whatever I knew or had just figured out.
- I worked on projects where accessibility was a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
- I also worked on projects where it sat at the very bottom of the backlog — and still wrote
alt,aria-labelandaria-liveevery time, because nobody was going to do it later. - I kept learning deliberately, through courses and certifications in accessibility and design.
- I started a public Telegram channel (in Russian) about digital accessibility and everything around it.
A habit, not heroism
None of that is the important part, though. The important part is the habit. On any project, in any task: turn on VoiceOver and listen. Does the interface announce itself sensibly? Can you actually move through it?
This is my personal task crafting — job crafting in the usual sense of reshaping your role around what you care about, scaled down to the level of individual tasks and daily habits. Nobody assigned it to me and it is not in any ticket. It is there because I can no longer not think about accessibility.
That black spot in my eye is no longer just a medical fact. It is a daily reminder: "Don't forget aria-label, role and tabIndex" 😉