The Web We Almost Built (And Why It Took a Pandemic to Fix It)

The Web We Almost Built (And Why It Took a Pandemic to Fix It)

Let me take you back to 1985. I’m seven years old, standing in a SUNY Albany professor’s office, watching a typewriter talk. Not metaphorically—literally speaking words aloud as they appeared on paper. My best friend’s dad, a professor who happened to be disabled, was showing me the future.

“This is for people who can’t see,” he explained, as I stood there mesmerized. The year was 1985. The ADA wouldn’t pass for another five years. The web didn’t exist yet. But in that office, surrounded by talking calculators and early screen magnifiers, I glimpsed something revolutionary: technology as an equalizer.

That childhood friend—I’d known him since I was two—gave me a front-row seat to pioneering accessibility work. His father wasn’t just using these tools; he was helping develop them, test them, advocate for them. This was before “accessibility” was even a buzzword. It was just about making things work for people who needed them to work differently.

Fast Forward: The Cognitive Dissonance Years

So imagine my confusion when I became a web developer in the 2000s and discovered that nobody—and I mean nobody—cared about accessibility. Here I was, having seen talking typewriters in the ’80s, and we were building websites that screen readers couldn’t even parse.

I’d mention accessibility in client meetings. Eyes would glaze over. “What percentage of our users need that?” they’d ask. As if human dignity came with a minimum viable market share.

The disconnect was surreal. I’d grown up knowing this technology existed, understanding its importance from childhood. Yet the entire industry treated it like some exotic edge case. We had the tools—WCAG guidelines, ARIA specifications, semantic HTML. We just didn’t use them.

The Dark Ages of Web Accessibility

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, web accessibility was treated like flossing—everyone knew they should do it, but almost nobody actually did. We’d slap an alt tag on an image and call it a day. Screen readers? Those were someone else’s problem.

I remember a client in 2018—big company, lots of money—who asked me to remove the “ugly” focus outlines from their site. “They don’t match our brand,” they said. I tried explaining what I’d learned in that SUNY office decades earlier. They didn’t care. I did it anyway. I’m not proud of it, but I did it. That’s where we were.

The most frustrating part? I knew better. I’d seen accessibility technology when it was revolutionary. I understood its importance from age seven. But the industry pressure, the client demands, the sprint deadlines—they all pushed accessibility to “phase two.” Phase two never came.

Enter COVID-19: The Great Digital Migration

Then March 2020 hit like a sledgehammer. Suddenly, everyone’s grandmother needed to use Zoom. Your technophobe uncle was ordering groceries online. That coworker who printed every email? Now navigating complex web apps from home.

But here’s what really changed: the web became essential infrastructure overnight. Not nice-to-have. Not convenient. Essential. And when something becomes essential, it better damn well work for everyone.

The pandemic didn’t just expose the digital divide—it shone a spotlight on every accessibility failure we’d been sweeping under the rug. Video calls without captions. Government websites that screen readers couldn’t parse. Educational platforms that keyboard users couldn’t navigate.

The Lawsuits Started Flying

2020 saw a 23% increase in ADA website lawsuits. 2021? Another 14% jump. Suddenly, accessibility wasn’t just moral—it was legal. And expensive. Domino’s Pizza’s Supreme Court case made headlines. Target’s $6 million settlement became a cautionary tale.

But I don’t think fear of lawsuits drove the real change. Something deeper shifted.

The Empathy Awakening

Here’s my theory: the pandemic made us all temporarily disabled. Couldn’t leave the house? That’s mobility impairment. Couldn’t understand muffled masks? Hearing impairment. COVID brain fog? Cognitive impairment. Suddenly, accessibility wasn’t about “them”—it was about us.

I watched developers who’d ignored accessibility for years suddenly caring about keyboard navigation because their mouse hand was in a cast. Designers who discovered color contrast ratios when their home office lighting made their screens unreadable. Product managers experiencing the web through their parents’ eyes during remote tech support sessions.

It was like the entire industry suddenly walked into that SUNY Albany office from 1985 and saw what I’d seen as a kid—that accessibility isn’t charity, it’s innovation. It’s not an edge case, it’s the edge that makes us better.

The Tools Got Better (Finally)

Credit where it’s due: the tooling exploded. Axe DevTools. WAVE. Lighthouse. ESLint accessibility plugins. Suddenly, finding accessibility issues was as easy as finding a missing semicolon. GitHub Actions that failed builds for accessibility violations. Figma plugins that checked contrast ratios in real-time.

The frameworks caught up too. React’s focus management. Vue’s ARIA utilities. Even good old WordPress started shipping with better accessibility defaults. The excuse of “it’s too hard” evaporated.

Where We Are Now

Today, in 2025, I can’t ship a site without accessibility testing. Not won’t—can’t. Clients ask about WCAG compliance in the first meeting. “AAA compliant” is in RFPs. Accessibility audits are line items in budgets.

My dark mode article you mentioned? That’s not just about looking cool. Dark mode is an accessibility feature for people with photosensitivity, migraines, or visual impairments. The fact that it also looks slick is just a bonus.

Every focus outline I implement, every ARIA label I add, every keyboard trap I prevent—it’s paying down technical debt we accumulated over decades. We built the web wrong the first time. We’re finally fixing it.

The Full Circle

Sometimes I think about that seven-year-old kid in the SUNY office, watching text become speech, seeing technology break down barriers. That professor—my friend’s father—he knew something the tech industry would take 40 years to figure out: when you design for disability, you design for humanity.

He passed away before the pandemic, before he could see the industry finally catch up to his vision. But every accessible website we build is part of his legacy. Every screen reader-friendly form, every keyboard-navigable menu, every properly contrasted button—they’re all echoes of those pioneering tools from the ’80s.

My childhood friend and I still talk about those days in his dad’s office. We joke that we were into accessibility before it was cool. But really, it was never about being cool. It was about remembering that technology’s highest purpose isn’t efficiency or engagement or even innovation—it’s inclusion.

A Personal Commitment

So here’s my pledge: every site I build, every component I create, every line of code I write will be accessible. Not because of lawsuits. Not because of compliance. Because a professor at SUNY Albany showed a seven-year-old kid that technology could be magic—but only if everyone gets to use the wand.

The ADA is 35 years old. The web is 34. I’ve been watching this space for 40 years. We’ve run out of excuses.

P.S. – If you’re reading this with a screen reader, first off, thank you for keeping us honest. Second, if anything about this site sucks for accessibility, email me. I’ll fix it. That’s not a legal disclaimer—that’s a promise from one human to another. And third, you’re using technology that amazed a seven-year-old me in 1985, and it still amazes me today.