Cascading Access Barriers

A pattern where an initial accessibility barrier triggers a chain of subsequent barriers, each compounding the difficulty of the previous one. For example, missing a pharmacy notification (first barrier) leads to a medication gap (second barrier), which worsens executive dysfunction (third barrier), which makes navigating the next prescription cycle even harder (fourth barrier). Cascading barriers are particularly harmful because they create feedback loops where system failures amplify the very impairments that caused the initial failure. Identifying and interrupting these cascades is a key consideration in designing accessible systems and processes.