accessibility ironies

I find it ironic how much the commonly used abbreviation for computer accessibility ("a11y", paralleling the frequent abbreviations of "internationalization" and "localization") is a fairly inaccessible abbreviation. It's unnecessary exclusive jargon, which violates the principles of universal design. It's going to cause difficulties for people with cognitive disabilities. It's more impenetrable to people using screen readers, unless they have set the options on their screen reader to parse the string as "accessibility" instead of "ay-eleven-why". It's substantially more difficult to dictate. Really, the only group of people with disabilities who are served by the abbreviation are those who have difficulty typing but still use a keyboard.

This probably is fed by my general frustration that the computer accessibility advocacy community spends too little time involving people with disabilities, not as end-users to be served, but as participants in design, goal-setting, and programming.