Hello again! I recently got to sit down with Blessing on The Growth Table podcast for a conversation about growth, purpose, and where accessibility fits into how entrepreneurs build their businesses.
Blessing wanted to get into both my personal story and the mindset behind it.
She wanted to know about my journey and the lessons people can learn from my experiences.
Here’s what came out of our conversation.
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How a Carnival Kid Taught Himself HTML
Blessing asked what made me decide to teach myself HTML rather than accept the limitations I was facing.
Honestly, it came down to curiosity and necessity.
In 2007, after my dad’s death ended our family’s traveling carnival business, I needed a way to sell used amusement rides for other owners. Back then you had three options: pay someone thousands of dollars, use a WYSIWYG builder that wouldn’t work for a screen reader user, or learn to code it yourself.
I leaned into the same mindset that got our carnival open in the next town even in hard weeks we just didn’t see that we had another option.
So I learned HTML, stuck with it for five or six years, then migrated to WordPress once it came along.
From Carnival Owner to Accessibility Advisor
Blessing asked when I realized this had become bigger than my own journey.
It snuck up on me. I’d already gone from carnival owner to equipment broker to life coach to podcast guest booker, and I wasn’t looking for another pivot. Two things changed that. In 2019 I gave a talk at Podfest Expo, and Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch, heard it and followed me into the lobby to introduce himself. I helped him out on a volunteer basis, and he became the first person to hire me as an accessibility expert. Then a few years later, AudioEye reached out after I thanked them for accepting a LinkedIn connection, and eventually convinced me I had something valuable to offer the ability to make complicated accessibility topics easier to understand. I’ve been writing for them for about three and a half years now.
Neither of those relationships started with a plan. They started with people seeing potential in me that I didn’t fully see in myself yet.
Why “Compliance” Is the Wrong Starting Point
Blessing asked what businesses tend to miss when they think of accessibility only as something to comply with.
Compliance thinking is fear-based, and fear gets you the bare minimum. When businesses instead see accessibility as a competitive advantage, they do it with a full heart thinking about how it benefits their customers, their products, and their bottom line.
There’s also a newer reason to care: accessibility is how you communicate with AI. Machine learning tools read the web through structure proper headings, alt text, unique link labels, keyboard-first navigation and right now, a lot of bots are effectively blind to sites that skip those basics. The same accessibility practices that help people also help your site rank better, load faster, and take less effort to maintain.
Practical Starting Points for Entrepreneurs
Blessing asked what a business owner should actually do first. A few of the fundamentals I shared:
- Keep your homepage focused the less time it takes someone to find what they need, the more likely they’ll stay
- Build for keyboard navigation first, then layer on mouse and other options
- Use a consistent heading structure so people can jump through content quickly
- Give every button and link a unique, descriptive label
- Write real alt text describe an image with the same effort you’d put into creating it, not just “logo” or “photo”
- Visit your own website and use your own forms, including checkout fix what would frustrate you, and you’ll fix a lot of what frustrates everyone
I also talked about a moment testing alt text with Claude, where it picked up on a mix of thoughtfulness and weariness in a colleague’s headshot that she hadn’t noticed herself a good example of AI being useful in small, well-chosen doses.
Where AI Still Falls Short
I was honest with Blessing that AI isn’t a wholesale accessibility fix. Many AI-powered tools including some built for podcasters aren’t fully accessible to screen reader users yet. And most companies leaning on AI to generate content aren’t checking whether that output is itself accessible. For me, inaccessible content and bad content are basically the same thing.
The Real Size of the Disability Market
We closed on numbers that don’t get talked about enough. Official disability counts run around one in six people, but that’s based purely on self-identification it misses people who mask invisible disabilities like autism or ADHD, and older adults who lose vision, hearing, or mobility but never call themselves “disabled.” Count everyone, and it’s closer to one in three or four somewhere between 1.3 and 2.25 billion people globally, spending an estimated $23 trillion last year.
More important than the raw numbers: this is one of the most loyal, vocal consumer groups there is, because so few businesses make the investment. When we find one that does, we stick with it and tell everyone we know.
About The Growth Table
The Growth Table is a podcast hosted by Blessing Arutere, exploring conversations with entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals about business growth, purpose, and the mindsets that help people navigate barriers without letting those barriers define them.
Connect
You can find The Growth Table and this episode on Spotify.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This recap only covers the highlights. You can catch the full episode using the players above.
Curious what accessibility could look like for your business? I offer a free review of your website’s homepage no obligation, just a clear look at where you stand. Visit theaccessibilityadvantage.com to see more of my work.
Accessibility benefits everyone.
