Right, which is why we need to somewhat entertain the idea that accessibility shouldn't be optional.
In the business environment you're talking about, I'm generally not in favor of legislating things, but maybe that's a requirement here. My point is that assuming what folkhack says is true, then the "we'll just educate people" idea might just not be feasible -- maybe it just straight up requires laws that force businesses to care.
At least for websites in general we can do things outside of the law that force people's hands. Google can deprioritize search results for pages that are inaccessible, but that won't really affect web apps. Maybe there are non-legislative technological penalties we could impose there as well; if there are certain things that only buttons can do, or if browsers start identifying pages/apps that are inaccessible and displaying warnings on them, or locking certain features.
SSL didn't really get solved until browsers started putting a big scary warning next to the URL bar that said the page was insecure. All the education and tooling was helpful, but it wasn't enough to make businesses care until their customers started asking them why Chrome/Firefox was saying that their app was insecure. It's tricky. I don't want the accessibility community to be the villain here, but it does kind of sound like commercial businesses need to be dragged into an accessible world even if they're kicking and screaming about it.
In the business environment you're talking about, I'm generally not in favor of legislating things, but maybe that's a requirement here. My point is that assuming what folkhack says is true, then the "we'll just educate people" idea might just not be feasible -- maybe it just straight up requires laws that force businesses to care.
At least for websites in general we can do things outside of the law that force people's hands. Google can deprioritize search results for pages that are inaccessible, but that won't really affect web apps. Maybe there are non-legislative technological penalties we could impose there as well; if there are certain things that only buttons can do, or if browsers start identifying pages/apps that are inaccessible and displaying warnings on them, or locking certain features.
SSL didn't really get solved until browsers started putting a big scary warning next to the URL bar that said the page was insecure. All the education and tooling was helpful, but it wasn't enough to make businesses care until their customers started asking them why Chrome/Firefox was saying that their app was insecure. It's tricky. I don't want the accessibility community to be the villain here, but it does kind of sound like commercial businesses need to be dragged into an accessible world even if they're kicking and screaming about it.