You might want to read this: The Great Accessibility Camp-Out

Greetings from Camp 1,

Klaus

Thanks for clarifying your comment. I have a very direct way of expressing myself so if you were offended, that was not my intent. I just think that it is important to be clear about things and I felt your comment was very indicative of the confusion about what accessibility is. I think you were really addressing universal access and although accessibility is an important part of that, it is not the same thing. And while I certainly do not deny (and never have) that accessibility can present certain auxiliary benefits for other populations, accessibility is for persons with disabilities, not search engines and mobile phones, etc. I think it is a problem when people list the advantages of accessibility and that persons with disabilities end up being the last item on that list, if at all, because it does not “sell” very well. This is an increasing trend and I do not see this as a step forward. So I hope this makes my concerns more clear.

I admit, that should have read:

“Accessibility is not only about building web sites for people with disabilities.”

As a matter of fact, everybody takes advantage of a well build, semantically rich website, which follows essential accessibility guidelines and best-practices. Not only people with disabilities. The impatient for example because the site loads faster, you get build-in search engine optimization (at least for Google), you reach the mobile users because your code is compliant to web standards like XHTML and CSS and so on.
This is what I actually wanted to say in my comment: too many people think that an accessible website is just about thinking of the blind here and there. No, it’s not. A website can also be inaccessible to certain user agents or whatever.

Maybe I took the term accessibility too far, but I know what I’m talking about. I worked 5 years at one of the leading german agencies creating accessible websites and won several awards for sites I built.

Chill out.