Accessibility is where all design projects need to start because it is the only way of avoiding huge mistakes and huge costs.
Accessibility is how you recognise the vast breadth of human capacities and needs. Without it, the future design space may seem small and manageable but that is a trick you play upon yourself in the present.
Accessibility shows how you need to plan for and be prepared to adapt for ways of being that you may not yet have either the skill nor the budget to respond to. The point is that you are aware of and anticipating such adaptions and alternative paths in your designs in the future.
Without accessibility, every project stage will be filled with surprises that seem negative to you. You begin to resent each new discovery of a human need or different physical, cognitive and/or cultural capacity.
You will always feel like you are failing. The small list of actions to take gets bigger with more pages.
You will always feel like you are firefighting. The big list of actions to take gets more complicated.
You will always feel trapped by ever expanding human needs and adaptions. You blame humans for their vastness and diversity.
By putting accessibility at the front of your project, as the foundation of your work, these surprises will feel less negative.
You can be positive, not defensive, about the work.
You will find people who want to help, not to criticise.
Accessibility is how you plan projects that help you, help your users and help humanity.
Start in the Human Space.
Start with Accessibility.