It's like the man who only starts caring about women's rights after he has a daughter. Like, ok, I guess it's nice that you've come around, but you couldn't have exhibited basic humanity earlier? ffs you presumably had a mother, a wife/girlfriend, sister, female cousin, female friends, female coworkers so even if you require a personal connection, couldn't you have gotten there earlier?

Just popping in to say this is also the key difference between Lawrence Kohlberg's 5th and 6th Stages of Moral Development.

What most people don't know about it is that not everyone will actually reach the 6th Stage. It's more of an opt-in. The vast majority of society functions at around the 5th (probably much lower these days).

So if you fall outside this category, you're likely far more emotionally developed and matured than the average person.

Kudos

I used to work for a beloved cable company whose name rhymes with "bombast", and they made damned sure that our iOS apps met federal accessibility requirements. Because they faced $1 million dollar per month fines from the FCC if the apps failed accessibility testing. Otherwise they would not have given two shits about blind people.

Same energy as people who don't understand how people can be good without the threat of eternal damnation to keep them in line

The kicker is that disabled infrastructure also helps you now if you aren't disabled. Ever acknowledged the existence of lowered curbs at intersections?

There's no reason not to improve our infrastructure

I have not always been perfect, but by and large I keep in my what I was taught since childhood to be empathetic, kind and be helpful without asking anything in return. As I grew older, I realised that not everyone were taught the same and thus don't have the same values. That said, I realised that if I want to persuade others, I incentivise them by stoking their egos and showing how doing things could be beneficial for them.

I don't think humans are purely selfish and egocentric, and having ego is not necessarily a bad thing. We are complex creatures that can't be put into one box of category. But sometimes when ego rears its head, you kinda have to provide carrot and stick incentives to get things done.

Everyone should care about accessibility, because it also improves things for non-disabled people.

Sure. If you need a selfish reason, most accessibility features end up helping everyone else too!

Voice assistants, curb ramps, audio books, subtitles, etc

When the latter doesn't trigger the empathy, I resort to the former. Some people are just too focused on their immediate surroundings to extend their empathy beyond their immediate family. That's an issue in itself, but whatever discussion is going on in OP is not going to address that

Of course, but that is not how our species' brains work, so take the positivity you can get.

I don't think it is about equality but more equity

Sure, but you aren't going to convince selfish people with that argument.

You know, the ones who need to be convinced?

Some people don't have empathy so they need to adopt that first argument as their ethos. Well more often than not, they don't even do that.

Also accessibility makes life easier for anyone, even if noone were disabled.

New parents, old people and people on their phone walking all want accessibility.