Hi, my name is François Faubert.

Jeff Croft, not afraid of being lynched by the new wave of accessibility-aware Web 2.0 designers, has posted a new article asking if accessibilty has been taken too far.

While I’m guessing his opinion may have been toned down on the way from his head to his hands, I do believe he has a point. To paraphrase and sum his opinion: “Accessibility is cool and all because it’s bad to ignore people with disabilities, but you can’t expect a company to spend all their web design budget for 0.5% of their customers. Therefore, some site aren’t 100% accessible on purpose.”

And it’s true. In real life, my employer gives me, say, 4 days to finish a website. It’s good enough if I can be satisfied with the semantics of things in that period of time. Odds are I won’t have any time left to make separate style sheets with high-contrast colors, one with big text, etc.

All can agree that it’s a good thing that there’s a lot more awareness around the accessibility of online content at the moment.

However, just like in any trend, it’s all too easy to pick on those who don’t follow it, never considering all the reasons for them not doing so.