www.dirty.org/underworld/

[b.miller]

just to throw a few words into the rumble...

1. it's so much easier to design with accessibility in mind than to go back and retrofit stuff. This doesn't mean you should design boring or plain websites, just that putting all those alt tags and class= spans and divs in when you first put the design together is much less of a pain in the ass, it's actually not a real pain in the ass at all.

2. there's no downside to making a site accessible, especially if the design's not done yet. Whether you personally care about it or not, there's no extra bother to design the site with the W3C in mind and it's not like it will diminish your work in any way or inhibit anyone from seeing it. And if you're not familiar with all the accessibility guidelines, reading about them might actually spurn an idea or two. Plus if you want to be "known" as a web designer, it's a good idea to know that stuff anyway.

3. anyone that's ever done any sort of multi-browser javascript will tell you that accessibility is the opposite of bad. It's so refreshing to finally be able to put together a site using firm standards and say "well, if it doesn't look right it's because of your browser, not my code."

Also, I'm not meaning any offense toward anyone specific here but the points that simon brought up were pretty web-designer-specific so for those that don't know what accessibility means or don't consider themselves technically proficient in this stuff shouldn't criticize it. I don't presume to know how to make circuitboards so telling someone who does not to use so many of those big round things seems a bit ridiculous.

Of course this only pertains to the web design half of this thread and not the design vs. "design" stuff. i'm not even trying to get into that one