You load the homepage.
There’s a new banner.
It’s covered in fire emojis.
You know – instantly – it’s bad.
Not broken. Just bad.
Especially for screen readers.
But really, for everyone.
You’ve told them about this.
Gently, at first. Then less so.
You even tried sneaking it into the style guide – a soft limit: one emoji, maybe two.
They never listen.
They want emojis. They want animations.
They want whatever’s loud, flashy, trendy.
Because it’s cool.
Because the companies they idolize are doing it.
Because no one’s thinking about the people it leaves behind.
It’s a visual scream.
Slapped on top of the homepage like Michael Bay has taken up web design.
And you sigh. Deeply.
Because this isn’t just about one banner and a bunch of 🔥 emojis.
It’s about culture.
About who gets to make decisions.
About what gets prioritized.
About what gets left broken – and why.
And you think:
Why doesn’t anyone else care the way I do?
People love to talk about accessibility culture like it’s a feel-good slogan.
Something you can pin to your Slack channel or bake into a quarterly goal.
But culture isn’t a vibe. It’s what people do – especially when no one’s watching.
This chapter is about what it takes to change a culture, which includes caring, convincing, showing, modeling, exhausting yourself, recovering, retrying, re-documenting, sighing deeply, and keeping on anyway.