This may be controversial view, but I'm with Bret Victor on this. Of course, we should do as much as possible to make everything accessible to everyone. But we should not strive for a single universal interface that's accessible to all, because that's sacrificing both the best and the average case for the worst case.
Consider books and vision loss. The tried-and-true solution to make books accessible is printing them in Braille. But nobody in their right mind would be suggesting we should only ever print books in Braille, because then it's equally accessible. It would be more "fair", but it would also be a ridiculous waste for the 99.5% of the world's population[0].
If we were to equalize all our technology and processes across all accessibility issues, our civilization would collapse - it would mean nothing depending on body motion, on body sensitivity, sight, sound, speech, taste, pain. The union of all existing disabilities is a life of a rock.
So since we can't really have a truly universal interface[1], we may as well give up on trying to design technology to the lowest common denominator, losing most of the benefits it gives, and instead design it to play to the strengths of human body. Fallback options should be available where possible, but at some point we have to understand that until medical technology homogenizes our bodies, not everyone will be equally suitable to every task.
(And I say that as someone who has always dreamed of being a pilot or an astronaut, but for whom that career path was cut off by large nearsightedness early in teenage years.)
Consider books and vision loss. The tried-and-true solution to make books accessible is printing them in Braille. But nobody in their right mind would be suggesting we should only ever print books in Braille, because then it's equally accessible. It would be more "fair", but it would also be a ridiculous waste for the 99.5% of the world's population[0].
If we were to equalize all our technology and processes across all accessibility issues, our civilization would collapse - it would mean nothing depending on body motion, on body sensitivity, sight, sound, speech, taste, pain. The union of all existing disabilities is a life of a rock.
So since we can't really have a truly universal interface[1], we may as well give up on trying to design technology to the lowest common denominator, losing most of the benefits it gives, and instead design it to play to the strengths of human body. Fallback options should be available where possible, but at some point we have to understand that until medical technology homogenizes our bodies, not everyone will be equally suitable to every task.
(And I say that as someone who has always dreamed of being a pilot or an astronaut, but for whom that career path was cut off by large nearsightedness early in teenage years.)
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[0] - "36 million people are blind" according to https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-a...
[1] - At least not until a proper brain-computer interface exists, and we all interact with everything using our thoughts.