"Web accessibility" for the disabled vs. for everyone

In the comments to my recent post, "Deciding who's legitimate," Zara provides some interesting information of web accessibility and a difference of opinions on it that I think deserves some attention. On the topic of legitimacy itself, Zara says this:

Finally, although there are certainly situations where it may be hard to definitively pin down a particular disability for lack of a clear-cut "diagnosis" and that these people should certainly not be penalised for it, I do think that there does need to be some sort of "line" if only to protect the rights of disabled people and prevent our issues from being highjacked from persons without disabilities. In Web accessibility, there is a very organised and concerted effort to expand what falls into the idea of disability to include everything from search bots to mac users, etc. Personally, I find that this can be a threat to rights that have already been recognised legally or to efforts of having those rights recognised.

Not knowing anything about this threat, I asked Zara to expand. She did that, and included great links on the debate, as well:

In the last year especially, several Web developers and designers, on blogs or mailing lists, have been questioning whether accessibility is a "persons with disabilities" issue or an "access for all" issue. For a summary of both positions, see this article from Accessites. I also suggest you have a look at isolani's series Accessibility in Trouble.

Basically, the reasoning seems to be that since some Web accessibility requirements can indeed present secondary benefits for persons without disabilities (for example, those using less performing material or mobile phone users or those with slow connections or non-native speakers of whatever language, etc.), then it is inadequate, perhaps even discriminatory, to present accessibility primarily as a persons with disabilities issue. And some feel that "selling" accessibility on the basis of benefits to disabled users is too difficult because most people are "uncomfortable" talking about persons with disabilities. So, most notably, search engine optimisation (SEO) is showcased heavily because, did you hear the news ?, Google is blind. In essence, many argue that accessibility is more about availability of resources for everyone. Not withstanding that there already is a concept for what they are referring to, i.e. universality, my major problems with this are :

Web accessibility is a complex field and many developers have a very limited understanding of what the real needs of persons with disabilities are. I do not believe that redefining accessibility to suit business or SEO concerns or suggesting that problems accessing a Web resource with a mobile phone are comparable to a disability will help them to better understand our needs.

Also, I feel that implementing accessibility conditionally to what is convenient for mobile phone users or search bots, etc., particularly in places where it is mandated by law, is not an indication of rights being recognised and upheld. While it is certainly nice that some accessibility requirements can be convenient for other users, I do not believe that you can consider these interests on the same level and I fear there is a real danger of ignoring requirements that are very necessary to certain types of disabilities but that are more demanding and/or present limited advantage in reaching broader audiences or achieving better SEO, etc. Moreover, I fear that with this new definition, there is real danger that rights to access for the disabled not be legally recognised in places where it has yet to be mandated by law because, after all, "accessibility is for everyone" so why would we need to legislate it for a particular population ?

Finally, and this is more a personal statement, I am troubled that this effort is coming from non-disabled people and that very few persons with disabilities are involved in these discussions, whatever their position may be. I feel like once again, things are being "decided" for us on something that is directly related to our rights by people who seem to have a limited understanding of the overall issues relating to disability.

Indeed, nondisabled people deciding for disabled folks what is best is an insidious problem. Just when you think the mechanisms are in place to work toward improvement of access, resistance seems to spring up and disabled people get crowded out of the conversation.

As someone very interesting in making my blog as accessible as possible to all disabled people, it's troubling to find that the information I need to do this may only get more clouded in the future. I want simple, understandable instructions on how to let blind folks, for example, have full access to whatever I decide to discuss -- particularly because as a group they may be much more knowledgeable about some disability issues than I am. I don't want the idea of "web accessibility" to be confused by a flurry of information on conveniences for people who can already access whatever they want.