You've probably seen this but others reading the topic might not:Gen-ik wrote:If there was one true standard that everyone had to follow then things may change. Who knows, one day it might happen... if we're lucky.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
Actually I'm happy to accept the odd special case which can't (or won't) follow standards. It's a part of life that some people make their own rules - which maybe later are adopted as standards (either that or they wind up tied to a tree by the neck). There's always a tension between conformity and individualism.
However, I think that for every webmaster who claims that accessibility limits their options, there's probably only one in a thousand for whom that's actually true.
Even then it's always possible to fork the site with a text only version. A screen reader could convey something about a Vermeer masterpiece - even just to say that "Vermeer had an astonishing understanding of light". A blind person will never be able to see the painting but at least they get to understand a little bit more about Vermeer and why he is a renowned artist.
If accessibility wasn't compulsory I probably wouldn't have made the effort to learn about it. I'm glad it is though, not least because in the end it teaches you to write better code.