"Slipping through the cracks": A Duoethnography of Web Accessibility
Shira Abramovich, Elizabeth Patitsas · 2024 · ASSETS '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3663548.3688543
Summary
This position paper uses duoethnography — a collaborative qualitative method where two researchers examine a shared topic through their contrasting personal experiences — to explore the practical labour of doing web accessibility work. The authors, Shira Abramovich (a professional web accessibility consultant) and Elizabeth Patitsas (a computer science professor who teaches accessibility), draw on their lived experiences navigating accessibility in academic and professional settings. Rather than focusing on technical failures or user testing, the paper examines the organizational, social, and resource challenges that make web accessibility so difficult to achieve and sustain in practice. The authors structure their analysis around several recurring themes from their professional lives: the gap between knowing what accessibility requires and having the resources to implement it, the tension between compliance-driven and user-centred approaches, the problem of accessibility knowledge being siloed within organizations, and the emotional toll of accessibility advocacy work. They argue that the dominant framing of web accessibility as primarily an awareness problem ("if people just knew about WCAG, they would comply") fundamentally mischaracterizes the challenge. Instead, they reframe accessibility as a complex resource management problem requiring ongoing, multifaceted organizational effort — more akin to maintaining infrastructure than completing a checklist.
Key findings
The paper identifies several critical insights from the authors' combined professional experience. First, accessibility work is often invisible labour — it happens in the margins of other roles, is rarely resourced adequately, and the people doing it are frequently isolated within their organizations. Second, the compliance model (meeting WCAG success criteria) is necessary but insufficient; organizations that treat accessibility as a checkbox exercise often achieve technical conformance while still creating unusable experiences. Third, accessibility knowledge degrades over time within organizations through staff turnover, platform updates, and shifting priorities, meaning accessibility requires continuous maintenance rather than one-time fixes. The authors describe how accessibility issues "slip through the cracks" not because of ignorance but because of systemic factors: competing priorities, insufficient staffing, lack of organizational processes, and the sheer volume of content and code that needs to be accessible. They also highlight the emotional burden on accessibility practitioners who must constantly advocate for resources while witnessing the real-world impact of inaccessibility on disabled users.
Relevance
This paper is essential reading for anyone involved in organizational accessibility efforts. Its reframing of accessibility as a resource management problem rather than an awareness problem has profound implications for how organizations approach digital inclusion. Rather than investing primarily in training and awareness campaigns, organizations need dedicated accessibility roles, sustainable processes, executive commitment, and ongoing maintenance budgets. The duoethnographic methodology itself is valuable — it demonstrates that practitioner experience is a legitimate and rich source of knowledge about accessibility challenges, complementing the technical and user-study approaches that dominate the field. For accessibility professionals, the paper validates the often-invisible emotional and organizational labour they perform and provides language for articulating why accessibility remains so difficult despite decades of standards and guidelines. The concrete recommendations — embedding accessibility into workflows rather than treating it as an audit, building organizational memory, resourcing maintenance — are immediately actionable.
Tags: web accessibility · professional practice · accessibility management · organizational accessibility · qualitative research · autoethnography · compliance
Standards referenced: WCAG 2.1