Speaking about empathy, might want to use some to get his point. He isn't talking about himself. He is talking about a typical software business making business decisions.
If adding support for accessibility delays their product delivery, or raises their costs, it's another tradeoff that might even kill their product. And then it wont be a case of the software not being accessible to those needing those features, but it not being accessible to anybody.
Sure, where the law mandates it, they can always do a half-ass job to be, in name, compliant. But full (or proper) accessibility will be judged in the end like any other feature decision.
You might consider those features essential, but you'd be surprised how many business features get cut to get something out, even more so for an MVP.
If you think those designing most websites and apps people use are made by "more compassionate people" who'd jump on such features out of ethical concerns, you'd be quite off.
Heck, this very website (HN) has a quite bad accessibility track record even considering the average website. Among other things: image elements do not have [alt] attributes, form elements do not have associated labels, links do not have a discernible name.
And this is from a major VC company with tons of resources, and a place where thousands upon thousands of devs frequent.
So, while everybody can get their "morally superior and empathetic" rocks off judging the parent, the reality is more like what's described above. It isn't bad if somebody points to the reality - or to the hypocrisy, if we're to see it ethically.
If adding support for accessibility delays their product delivery, or raises their costs, it's another tradeoff that might even kill their product. And then it wont be a case of the software not being accessible to those needing those features, but it not being accessible to anybody.
Sure, where the law mandates it, they can always do a half-ass job to be, in name, compliant. But full (or proper) accessibility will be judged in the end like any other feature decision.
You might consider those features essential, but you'd be surprised how many business features get cut to get something out, even more so for an MVP.
If you think those designing most websites and apps people use are made by "more compassionate people" who'd jump on such features out of ethical concerns, you'd be quite off.
Heck, this very website (HN) has a quite bad accessibility track record even considering the average website. Among other things: image elements do not have [alt] attributes, form elements do not have associated labels, links do not have a discernible name.
And this is from a major VC company with tons of resources, and a place where thousands upon thousands of devs frequent.
So, while everybody can get their "morally superior and empathetic" rocks off judging the parent, the reality is more like what's described above. It isn't bad if somebody points to the reality - or to the hypocrisy, if we're to see it ethically.