Digital Web Magazine - Seven Accessibility Mistakes (Part 2)

Christian Heilmann lists and examines seven common accessibility mistakes:

1. Believing in products without putting them to the test
2. Taking too much responsibility: “We should help the client understand that when it comes to maintaining the product, accessibility is as much his responsibility as it is ours.”
3. Planning only for the worst-case scenario: not designing for the lowest common denominator, “keeping alive the myth that accessible products have to be ugly and cumbersome”
4. Sharing problems with the visitor: not turning our technical challenges into a burden for the visitor (e.g. CAPTCHAs)
5. Trying to solve problems outside our area of experience (e.g. font resizing is a browser task, not a website task)
6. Hiding or overriding accessibility/usability enhancements (usually for visual purity)
7. Catering to your client—not their clients

That last one is almost the most important one: as a designer, I should primarily be serving the end users, not my client.