In professional conversations, the first signals that emerge about digital accessibility are often those that the eye picks up on: low contrast, a button that's too discreet, text that's too dense. These elements are important, of course, but they represent only a tiny fraction of the subject. So why this single scope?
Many users surf the Web by vision and spontaneously project this experience as their only reference. This prism - or bias - directs our attention towards what we can see and makes us forget everything that we cannot see. However, a large part of accessibility lies elsewhere: beneath the graphic surface lies a whole decisive territory.
The same site, radically different experiences
The spontaneous assessment of a site is therefore often based on a visual impression: harmony of colours, rhythm of spacing, overall balance. In this context, a site can seem accomplished, coherent and sometimes even exemplary. But this feeling is just one of many.
A design bias, not a lack of competence
It would be easy to see this as a lack of skills, but it's more of a prism. Historically and culturally, the Web has been shaped by vision-centred approaches. (and the mouse).
Training, tools and professional reflexes still encourage this perspective: scan, click, move fast. Nothing really prepares you to read a page entirely from the keyboard, to interpret a structure with a screen reader or to understand what an interface becomes when interactions are based on other capabilities.
This perceptual bias limits the way we imagine the experience, not out of ill will, but because another reality remains unexplored.
Digital accessibility starts with this voluntary shift: accepting to look, listen and understand differently. Accepting that what works for some does not work for all. Accepting that inclusivity cannot be decreed - it has to be built through design choices that change everything. It's a way of creating a web that welcomes all ways of entering, not just the ones you experience yourself.