Accessibility, like globalization, expands your market, and should be part of a long term strategy. But when building out new projects, its severely slows down feature development. Both should be seen as tech debt, but tech debt is not evil, just like debt is not even. You are borrowing from the future for present day benefits. Used wisely and you can create a successful project that can afford to spend time on accessibility. Waste too much time on accessibility to start and you may burn through all your resources before seeing any success.
I mainly agree, but does the numbers of blind people really justify it economic wise?
I allmost see accessibility as charity. I want to add it to my apps, mainly because it is not nice to ignore people needs(and who know, with bad luck I might end up in that group one day), but not because I expect great monetary returns.
But thats not optimal, right? But most do not care, as long as they are not part if that subset.
I mean, I find it hard to care too much either, when my main concern are all the missing and buggy features, that needs fixing first..