I wonder what is stopping accessibility from being as popular as backwards compatibility... none of the resources I used when I started learning web development ever mentioned it (aside from alt text in the image tag). You really have to seek out information about it purposely.
There are several things that stop accessibility from being popular, here are the few I think about :
- developers generally don't need it, can't easily test it, and aren't even that aware of it
- "accessibility" can mean a lot of things. Are we talking about blind persons, daltonism, low visibility, limited motor skills, or something else I don't even know about? Each one has their challenge, and it's difficult to address all of them on purpose
- accessibility is often regarded as "niche" by stakeholders (unless one of them requires it or you really have a big scale), and thus not important. Unlike backward compatibility, it's not easy to have accurate numbers on how many of your users require it too.
That is not to say accessibility is not important.
Generally, the first steps to get it right is NOT to design anything specific for them, but instead to adhere to standards, semantic HTML (or whatever your platform use if you do a native app), have enough constrast, big enough fonts, and take user-settings into account (generally it's as easy as not overriding anything like zooming and scrolling).
The good thing about accessibility is if your app/website is accessible, it also benefits all your other users, in some ways.
