Your website data is a lie

Yesterday, there was a now deleted tweet making the rounds that said something to the effect of…

Know your audience. If your website doesn’t get any visitors from users on screen readers, you don’t need to make building sites that work with screen readers a priority.

That’s 100% bullshit.

Your visitor data is a reflection of the website you have today. It’s a lie, or at best, a partial truth.

It doesn’t tell you what people who visit your site want or care about. It only tells you how they respond to what you’ve built today. And even then, thanks to ad blockers and technology generally being wonky, it doesn’t capture everyone or tell you everything.

If your site is a shitty experience for visitors with disabilities, they won’t use your site. If it doesn’t provide proper landmarks for screen readers, they’ll go somewhere else. If keyboard-only users can’t navigate it, they’ll go somewhere else. If your color choices and contrast are unreadable for people with color blindness or visual impairments, they won’t visit.

If you don’t have users with disabilities using your site today, maybe your site is just a shitty experience for them.

You can’t trust that data. In many ways, the data is self-fulfilling.

So… yea, optimize your site for visitors disabilities. Honestly, not doing that is just an asshole move.