Field Notes from the Accessibility Front: When Legal Minimums Become Cultural Maximums

Some days, I look at a product, a system, a building, and I ask myself: Is this really the best we could do? It's not from a place of blame, but from the 'sinking feeling in one's stomach' that you get when you come to the realization that we’ve come to accept something that was never supposed to be permanent: regulatory compliance as a finish line.

In my work across engineering and accessibility, I see the same pattern repeat, again and again. Someone will say, “But we’re compliant.” And they’ll say it like it’s a badge of honor. Like the box is checked and we can move on. (cringes)

Let's just lay it all out here: Regulatory compliance was never designed to represent excellence. It was built as a floor, often a low one. A legal baseline. A promise not to fall below a certain threshold. And yet, somewhere along the way, that floor became a ceiling. It became a reason not to evolve.

That’s what I call the compliance ceiling, a cultural pattern where the minimum allowed becomes the maximum attempted, or as my title says "Legal Minimums becomes the Cultural Maximums". Look around the landscape and you’ll see how embedded this mindset is.

1. New homes, for example. Thousands are being built right now with no accessibility provisions. Not even basic features that could serve people across the lifespan, no backing for grab bars, no zero-step entries, no adjustable-height surfaces. Nothing that would allow someone to age in place or live with a disability without retrofitting. Why? Because current code doesn’t require it, unless you hit specific thresholds. It’s not about bad intent. It’s just that the system allows opting out.
2. Vehicles? Same story. We’ve got the most advanced manufacturing platforms in the world, and yet no mainstream car comes with built-in modular accessibility. People rely on aftermarket workarounds, not because that’s the best option, but because that’s what the regulatory structure quietly accepts. Again, not malice, just misaligned incentives.
3. And then there’s technology. Accessibility features often launch as part of initial compliance work, captioning, screen reader support, basic interface tweaks. But after launch, development tends to shift toward features that benefit the broader user base. Unless there’s a curb cut effect, something that benefits everyone, the innovation pipeline slows. The original user? They’re now a maintenance task, not a priority.

This isn’t a failure of individual effort. It’s a systems design problem. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we got here and more importantly, how we get out.

Right now, regulation often functions as a shield: “We met the requirement. We’re covered.” But what if we stopped using regulation as a gatekeeper, and started treating it as a springboard This is where mechanism design theory becomes relevant. What if we built systems where inclusive design isn’t just a moral imperative, but the most strategically advantageous move?

Imagine:

1. Housing codes that reward lifetime design with faster approvals or better financing terms.
2. Vehicles that come factory-provisioned with accessibility modules, and qualify for special regulatory acceleration.
3. Software evaluated not just by whether it passed an audit, but whether it’s evolving to reflect human variance.

The idea isn’t to penalize. It’s to unlock progress. To create conditions where exceeding the standard isn’t an exception, it’s the ecosystem. Personally, I’ve grown more cautious, now that's an understatement, about equating compliance with accomplishment. Especially when we know that true inclusion can’t be reverse-engineered through a retrofit. It has to be foundational. It has to be imagined from the beginning.

So no, don't get me wrong. I’m not criticizing any specific company, program, or person. I’ve seen some of the most dedicated people working within these constraints doing incredible work. What I’m naming is the architecture itself. The incentive structure. The logic we’ve inherited that tells us “compliant” is the end, when it should have only ever been the beginning.

It brings me back to the work I'm doing now. I lead accessibility engineering with the mindset of a systems architect and the urgency of someone who’s lived through exclusion. I’m not here to do what’s been done. I’m here to ask better questions, rewire defaults, and make sure future systems are born with dignity built in. I don’t believe in retrofitting equity. I believe in engineering for human difference from the start.

If your organization is ready to stop checking boxes and start building futures, then let’s talk. Because if the ceiling’s this low, it means the roof is ready to come off.