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As many of you know, I was at SXSW a couple of weeks ago, and there was a huge amount of buzz around Web accessibility, with nearly half of all Web-oriented panels having something to do with it. That’s great to hear, and there are lots of good things that will come of that. But the one meme that seems to be resonating post-conference is incomplete, and more than a little dangerous in the hands of those who don’t fully understand it.

In the Accessibility Is for Everyone panel, Jeffrey Veen started his talk by saying, “I don’t care about accessibility.” Now, since he’s a well-known speaker, it’s no real shock to hear him say that, since you know he’s going to clarify his position and explain why accessibility is really a good thing, and generally easy to do. After all, his own presentation tips say to “start strong.”

What concerns me most is this: that one sound bite is slowly getting filed away in the minds of people who genuinely don’t care about accessibility. Those in Jeff Veen’s sphere of influence (and given his history, that’s more than a few) may have heard that he just gave them a free pass to be unconcerned with accessibility issues. And now, people like Sharron Rush, John Slatin and my colleague Wendy Chisholm - who were on the panel with Jeff - and people like me have to explain to designers that what Jeff said isn’t just to stop paying attention to accessibility.

I know he didn’t mean that, because I saw the presentation, and I read his notes. Veen gets it, because getting it is his job, and has been since before most Web designers got their first cramps from typing angle brackets. He knows you have to care about it, even if you are a standardista. And if you heard that in his message, you can stop here.

But if you quoted him out of context saying “I don’t care about accessibility” on your blog, as many did, you need to read on. Here’s his payoff pitch:

And that’s why I don’t care about accessibility. Because when Web design is practiced as a craft, and not a consolation, accessibility comes for free.

Oh, how I wish that good Web design on its own would be enough to make a site accessible. I would retire from the field of accessibility, with joy in my heart and a spring in my step, if that were true. But it’s not. Not completely, anyway.

There are things that designers need to know, like how to write alt text (tips: short and to the point; when the image is a link, describe the link target; “” for spacers and rounded corners); why CSS layout is great and layout tables aren’t (though they’re not the end of the world, either); what the tabindex and accesskey attributes are (easy); when and how to use long descriptions (when you’d take more than a sentence to describe a graphic over the phone, like with a chart, link to that info in an HTML file); why validity is important (because browsers and assistive technologies depend on it), and why semantics are more important than default visual representations (because some people don’t browse with their eyes. Search engines too.). And more. Yes, you do have to think about it. Yes, you do have to read up on it before you call yourself an accessibility expert. Yes, you.

Which isn’t to say that good Web design skills aren’t important. They’re a vital element of Web accessibility, not to mention the last best hope for any employment in the Web field. Accessibility is “another arrow in your quiver,” as Joe Clark put it, provided you know more about accessibility than the URL for Bobby. At that point, Jeff’s hyperbole aside, you can just relax and treat accessibility as just another part of the process of creating content. And if problems arise, you will be able to solve them more easily in a standards-based development process than you ever could with tag soup.

The way I read what Jeff wanted people to hear was: Accessibility is another reason why semantic, standards-based design is so powerful. If you design it and build it right in the first place, and include accessibility as a design goal, it’s not a pain to fix what’s broken.

Accessibility is not free: it’s just a hell of a lot cheaper in bulk.