Shared horizons

“Making a more accessible world is a broad and shared horizon, not a checklist,” writes Sara Hendren, in this excellent piece about accessible design. Hendren argues that while seeking out paths to universal design is well and good, we ought not to presume that nothing less than the high standard of “universal” is valuable. But she isn’t arguing for compromising or making tradeoffs so much as being specific about what contexts and people you’re designing for, and in what ways the design serves those needs. I think there’s something instructive about the general shape of many an argument about the perfect versus the good here: as Hendren notes, look for a “shared horizon, not a moral hierarchy.”