Tasha Chemel is a professional academic coach. She's blind. She uses VoiceOver — a screen reader built into Apple devices — to navigate the web. In 2019, she blogged about trying to use Facebook.
New notifications kept interrupting VoiceOver while she was reading the news feed. Buttons on Marketplace were unlabeled — just silent dead zones on the screen. Instagram Stories were completely inaccessible. She wrote:
"The message that I keep receiving is that the world just doesn't value me, and that people really don't care."
This isn't a story about lawsuits. It's about what happens when 7 million Americans with vision impairments try to use the internet — and the internet doesn't work.
The Numbers
2.2 billion people globally have near or distance vision impairment, according to the World Health Organization. 43.3 million are blind. In the United States:
- 7 million Americans have vision impairment, including 1 million with blindness (American Foundation for the Blind)
- 28.7% of U.S. adults — over 70 million people — have some type of disability (CDC)
- 22.1% of Americans with vision difficulty live below the Federal Poverty Level, compared to 11.1% of nondisabled Americans
These aren't abstract statistics. These are people trying to order groceries, apply for jobs, pay rent, and access government services online.
What a Screen Reader Actually Sounds Like
If you're sighted, you've probably never heard a screen reader. It's software that reads aloud every element on a webpage: text, links, buttons, images, headings, forms. Blind users navigate by listening — and by using keyboard shortcuts to jump between elements.
When a website is built correctly, a screen reader conveys the structure and content clearly. The user hears headings, follows links, fills out forms, and completes transactions independently.
When a website is not built correctly, the user hears this:
- An image with no alt text: "Image." (No description. Could be a product photo, a navigation icon, or decoration. The user has no idea.)
- An unlabeled button: "Button." (What does it do? Add to cart? Delete account? Close dialog? Unknown.)
- A link that says "Click here": "Link: Click here." (Where? For what? There might be thirty "Click here" links on the page.)
Holly Tuke, a registered blind assistive technology advisor, describes her screen reader as "so much more than a couple of devices and a few pieces of software — it's my independence. It's my eyes in a way." (Source)
When the web is inaccessible, her independence disappears.
"They Fix Something, Then They Break Something Else"
A blind woman described the Sisyphean experience of online shopping. One major e-commerce site removed the label from its "sign in" button during a routine update. For two months, she couldn't buy anything. The button was there — sighted users could see it — but her screen reader couldn't identify it.
She also tried to order groceries for delivery. She selected all her items, navigated to checkout, and discovered there was no accessible way to pick a delivery time. The time selector was a visual-only calendar widget.
"They fix something, then they break something else," she said. (Source: Perkins School for the Blind)
This isn't a rare experience. A study of 100 blind users found they lost an average of 30.4% to 45.9% of their time on the computer to frustrating accessibility experiences. Nearly half their day, wasted.
COVID Made Everything Worse
When the pandemic forced everything online, disabled people faced a crisis. The American Foundation for the Blind surveyed 1,921 blind and low-vision individuals:
- 59% were concerned about food access
- 45% experienced challenges with food/grocery delivery services
- Over 40% reported accessibility problems with online ordering platforms
- 38% reported accessibility problems with work-from-home technology
- 66% felt less independent after lockdown
One blind man was forced to register with a local foodbank because he couldn't navigate grocery delivery websites. He managed only two deliveries in two months. He described it as "degrading and stressful." (Source: Disability News Service)
A deafblind participant in the AFB survey wrote:
"Deaf-blindness is isolation enough. Without face-to-face and tactile communication, I might as well be in solitary confinement."
Social distancing measures weren't designed with blindness in mind either. Stores marked 6-foot distances with yellow tape on the floor — not tactile enough for a blind person to detect with their feet. (Source: HuffPost)
Government Websites Are Some of the Worst
Chris Danielsen is totally blind. He described trying to use government services online:
"Magnify the experience of the frustration you normally experience with government and increase it by like five or 10 times the magnitude."
He went to his local DMV to renew his identification card and encountered a check-in kiosk that wasn't accessible for blind users. He's been unable to submit comments on public comment portals. Payment processing systems break with assistive technology. (Source: Governing)
The AFB found that 21% of blind or low-vision respondents experienced a barrier on a government website at least once a day. 28% experienced a barrier with a government mobile app daily.
Carlos Mora, a blind Baltimore resident who worked full-time and was accepted to a master's program at Johns Hopkins, tried to use USA Learns — a government educational resource. The site was completely inaccessible. The National Federation of the Blind filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education on his behalf. (Source: NFB)
Ronza Othman, a blind attorney managing equal employment opportunity programs at a federal agency, testified before the U.S. Senate in 2023. She revealed that blind prosecutors nearly failed to disclose critical information in legal discovery because the law enforcement database was inaccessible to assistive technology. (Source: NFB Senate Testimony)
Blind and disabled veterans cannot log onto the VA website for their health benefits because the portal is incompatible with screen readers. Tables aren't navigable, buttons are hidden, checkboxes are unlabeled. A Congressional report stated: "When reader apps or other devices do not work on VA websites as required by law, these veterans should not have to rely on friends and relatives to gain access and file benefits claims." (Source: Washington Post)
The Job Application Black Hole
The employment gap for disabled people is stark: only 19.1% of people with disabilities were employed in 2021, compared to 63.7% of nondisabled peers (BLS). Inaccessible online job applications are a contributing factor.
One blind person described their experience: since losing their sight in their late 20s, they dealt with "more than their fair share of inaccessible online job applications and other digital assets as part of the hiring process." Many disabled applicants encounter similar barriers and simply abandon the application. (Source: Deque)
The ADA requires accessible employment processes. But if the online application is inaccessible, a qualified candidate never makes it into the pipeline.
"It's Weird Actually Feeling Seen"
When Reddit announced API pricing changes in 2023 that threatened accessible third-party apps, the r/Blind subreddit went on strike alongside thousands of other communities. The blind moderators needed help from a sighted person just to set the forum to private.
One user captured something unexpected:
"It's weird actually feeling seen amidst this Reddit blackout... Even though this 'death of Reddit apps' debacle is so frustrating for us, I've never seen so many people actually say they care about accessibility."
Another said:
"We've had the experience where we've just been kind of brushed off. We shoulder it and move on. But it can be frustrating. And tiring."
The Scale of the Problem
WebAIM's 2025 analysis of the top one million home pages found:
- 94.8% had detectable WCAG failures
- Average of 51 errors per page
- Users with disabilities encounter errors on 1 in every 24 page elements
- Only 13.7% of pages had a "skip to content" link
And those are just the errors automated tools can detect. Manual testing would reveal more.
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, said it best: "The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
The web was designed to be universal. Right now, for 70 million disabled Americans, it isn't.
What You Can Do
You don't need to be a developer. You don't need a budget.
- Try your own website with a screen reader. VoiceOver is free on Mac (Cmd+F5). NVDA is free for Windows. Spend 10 minutes navigating your site with your eyes closed.
- Write meaningful alt text for every image. Not "image" or "photo." Describe what a customer needs to know.
- Label your form fields. Every input needs a visible, programmatically associated label.
- Test with a keyboard only. Unplug your mouse. Can you complete a purchase? Fill out a contact form?
- Ask. If you have disabled customers or employees, ask them about their experience. Their feedback is more valuable than any automated scan.
Accessibility isn't a compliance checkbox. It's the difference between independence and dependence, inclusion and isolation, dignity and frustration.
Haben Girma — the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School — put it simply:
"Separate is never equal. Disability is not a barrier, but accessibility can be."
For the specific technical issues that block access, see our data breakdown of the 10 most-cited accessibility violations.
Sources: WHO Vision Impairment Fact Sheet, CDC Disability Statistics, AFB Statistics, AFB Flatten Inaccessibility Survey, WebAIM Million 2025, WebAIM Screen Reader Survey, Slate, Perkins School for the Blind, Washington Post, NBC News, WBUR