Well, I suppose this has been a long time in coming, but I have recently been in a circular debate on one of the forums I regular: attempting to reason with an inexperienced developer that embracing the need for compliance and accessibility within our design process actually frees us up to expand our web presence. The argument spawned from the simplistic inquiry about how to lock a font size down to the degree that users were not able to increase or decrease font size. My initial response was to gently chide the user in question by reminding him that we are dealing with an end user product with web design, and we need to create our product to give the user the most flexibility rather than forcing them to adhere to rigid guidelines defined by our lack of creativity. Upon receiving a very juvenile and My-way-or-the-highway-esque response, I decided to take a big step back and review the big picture behind the need for accessibility and compliance in web.
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