I had no idea there are so many disabled or people with different abilities. If you're not disabled or don't have someone close to you that is how would you expect somebody to know about those with disabilities. And couple that with 94% of disabilities are invisible.

I grew up in the time of Christopher Reeves, Superman. His injury was three years prior to mine and I know I had heard about it but I can't ever call me thinking, "that could happen to me". It doesn't even have to be a sport that takes you out. I knew someone that was driving down the street in a Volkswagen where they were doing roadwork. There were those huge sheets of steel covering a hole. Well, on the steel sheet was a lot of moisture and when his tires hit it it sent him out of control into some heavy machinery off to the side of the road leaving him a high-level quadriplegic. But again, if you don't know somebody when are you going to think about it disabilities? Something we must remedy as a part of our education system. They are so many things that can happen to us throughout our lives and as we age we are more likely to become disabled. With 40% of those over the age of 65 many of us start having mobility, cognitive, auditory, and visual disabilities. I don't

Not because of what it means. Because of what it implies — that people with disabilities are outside by default, and the goal is to let them in. That always rubbed me wrong. Able-bodied people have rightful access to products, environments, and communications as a baseline. Why is access for everyone else treated like a separate initiative?

My thinking was: companies that focus on disability adaptations are doing necessary work, sure. But the framing bothered me. Fixing something broken after the fact instead of building it right the first time.

I still think that. But I've softened on it — because of universal design.

What Universal Design Actually Means

Universal design is the idea that products, environments, and communications should be built from the start so that everyone can use them — regardless of ability, age, or situation. Not retrofitted. Not adapted after the fact. Designed that way from day one.

The classic physical example is curb cuts. They were put in for wheelchair users. But they also help parents with strollers, delivery workers with hand trucks, people on bikes, anyone with a temporary injury. Good design for one group turns out to be good design for everyone.

Digital works the same way. Captions on video were built for the deaf and hard of hearing. They're also used by people watching in a noisy room, people learning a second language, and people like me — watching TV with Echo Dots that don't fill the room. High contrast text helps people with low vision. It also helps anyone reading on a phone in bright sunlight. Keyboard navigation helps people who can't use a mouse. It also helps power users who just move faster without one.

When you build for the edge cases, you often build something better for everyone.

Where We Still Fall Short

I use voice control and switch access daily. I depend on it. And I can tell you that digital accessibility in most products is still an afterthought — if it's a thought at all.

Apps that aren't navigable by voice. Websites that break with screen readers. Videos with no captions. Forms that can't be completed with a keyboard. PDFs that are just scanned images with no readable text. These aren't edge cases for me — they're walls.

The frustrating part is that most of these aren't hard to fix. Semantic HTML, proper alt text, captioned video, logical tab order — none of this is exotic engineering. It just requires someone to care enough to do it.

Why I'm Writing About This

I'm a C 3-4 incomplete quadriplegic. I interact with the digital world almost entirely through voice and adapted technology. My experience with what works and what doesn't isn't theoretical — it's daily.

I'm not a designer or developer. I'm a user. And users who live at the edges of what a product can handle see things that people in the middle never notice.

Universal design, done right, means fewer walls. Not just for people like me — for everyone who doesn't fit the assumed default. And in digital products especially, the assumed default is increasingly wrong for a huge portion of the actual audience.

Build it right from the start. That's the whole argument.

I'm still learning about universal design principles — this is where my thinking is right now, not a final word on it.