What everyone (still) wants to know is how to motivate their colleagues into taking responsibility for accessibility.
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When I’m asked, for the second time, during the second Q&A, about motivation, I still don’t have a stock answer. I try to quickly come up with something (hopefully pithy) to say. Then something speaks from deep inside me: “Shame.”
This elicits some chuckling among the group. I’m quick to clarify that I don’t mean moral shame; I’m not talking about making people feel bad about letting down disabled or vulnerable people. In all honesty, that was not why I began incorporating accessibility into my own work.
I’m talking about professional shame: the shame accompanying doing a bad job. Developers, more than anyone else I know, identify with being capable. Pushing poor development work is not just embarrassing, it threatens their very sense of self.
When I first learned about web standards, it was with great pride that I would release valid XHTML, and with great shame when I was not able. When I discovered accessibility, it felt like a cooler kind of validity. Fewer people were talking about it, but it had a palpable impact on user experience. “It would be a realshame not to do this,” I thought.
The world could do with a lot more professional shame. It's cliché, but it's true: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.