From Awareness to Action: How Excluding One User Can Cost You an Entire Audience

Breandan, who lives with progressive vision loss, shared a truth that every digital creator should hear:

“So the reason why there aren’t blind or partially sighted people online buying from you is because your website’s not accessible. If it was accessible, imagine what that experience is like for someone like me. Imagine how many people I will tell about this. I imagine how many of my family and friends will actually crowd in to also support that business because they know the difference it makes for me.“

Inaccessibility doesn’t just push one person away. It impacts how entire communities interact with your brand.

“Not 100% sighted — and not 100% included”

Breandan opened with honesty: he didn’t think about accessibility until it became unavoidable.

“Up till the age of about 22, 23, I didn’t know what accessibility was. Did I even care? I was getting on with life and studying and my first job.”

But after being diagnosed with a genetic eye condition, the digital world began to look different — and not just visually.

“Disability was actually the interaction of three things: the body… the environment around me… and the rest of my background.”

He calls them the “three B’s”: body, barriers, and background. And he illustrated how each of these played a role in his experience. His body was changing — his sight was deteriorating. The barriers emerged when the tools he had previously used at work became harder or impossible to interact with. Even though the systems hadn’t changed, his ability to access them had. Finally, his background — including his upbringing and cultural context — shaped how he responded to those changes, with initial feelings of guilt, denial, and hesitation to ask for help.

This framework reframes disability not as a fixed label, but as a dynamic interaction between the individual, the environment, and the social lens through which they navigate the world.

It’s a reminder that accessibility isn’t just about compliance — it’s about understanding the full context of people’s lived experiences.

From London to New York: Two Models, Two Realities

Breandan shared striking contrasts between his experience in the UK and the US. In London, a thoughtful question from his boss changed his outlook:

“My boss came up to me one day and said to me, ‘Breandan, do you think a larger screen would be helpful?’ I hesitated… but it actually made my work a lot easier.”

That simple offer wasn’t just kind — it reflected what Breandan calls the social model of disability, where the burden is on systems, not individuals, to remove barriers.

By contrast, in the U.S., Breandan noticed a more individualistic approach:

“It’s kind of exhausting to be always on the hook for your own advocacy… that to me is not the social model.”

His takeaway for web creators? Don’t wait for users to ask. Build inclusivity from the start.

COVID-19: Shared Barriers, Shared Insights

When the pandemic hit, Breandan returned to Ireland. And for a brief moment, he noticed something unusual:

“Suddenly everyone was locked down. Suddenly everyone had barriers.”

He felt, for the first time, that his experience wasn’t isolated — and that brought unexpected confidence:

“I found in a strange way that my own sense of myself and my own confidence increased because I felt more of an equal.”

But post-pandemic, many of the same inequities returned — and with them, the urgency of keeping accessibility front and center.

Awareness Isn’t Enough

Breandan reminded us that while awareness days like GAAD are important, they’re just the beginning:

“It’s not enough just to do a once-off and put an overlay on a website. We have to actually have a method for constantly reviewing it and keeping that door open.”This is where tools like Ally by Elementor come in — helping web creators maintain more  inclusive experiences without needing to reinvent their process every time.

Shared Responsibility

So, whose job is it to make websites accessible? According to Breandan:

“I feel it really is a shared responsibility… Sitting around waiting on disabled people to ask is not what I call creating conditions.”

That shared responsibility spans individuals, companies, designers, and governments. And in the digital space, web creators are on the front lines.

Accessibility Isn’t Just a Barrier — It’s a Business Multiplier

Too often, businesses assume people with disabilities “aren’t their audience.”

“The argument that says, ‘I don’t have people with disabilities on my website’… well, maybe that’s because it’s not accessible.”

And the impact of inclusion stretches far beyond one user:”Imagine how many of my family and friends will actually crowd in to also support that business because they know the difference it makes for me.”

Final Words to Web Creators

Breandan closed with a reminder of just how vital this work is:

“You’re actually doing the most vital work to bring the kind of edge cases into the mainstream. And that’s a way of doing good and doing well…So keep going.”If you’re using WordPress, tools like Ally by Elementor can help you take that next step — not as an afterthought, but as part of your core process. Because creating for everyone isn’t extra work — it’s simply good work.