Abandonment
When care is withdrawn -- and access fades away.
What It Is
Abandonment is a disabling force. It occurs when accessibility that once existed is withdrawn -- quietly or suddenly -- and leaves people crippled: a loss of functionality they previously relied on.
Sometimes abandonment creeps in through drift: a missed test, a forgotten feature, a budget line quietly deleted. Other times, it arrives through decisive action: a redesign with no fallback, a system upgrade that breaks compatibility, or a shift in leadership that deprioritizes inclusion.
Abandonment can be deliberate. It is sometimes framed as modernization, efficiency, or cost savings -- but behind the language of “tradeoffs” is often a calculated decision to cut disabled people loose. Cruelty doesn't always look like hostility. Sometimes it's a shrug.
Abandonment doesn't always announce itself. It hides inside silence: a caption track that disappears without notice, a button that stops working with no fix, an earlier act of care allowed to expire. But quiet doesn't mean harmless -- or blameless.
Abandonment causes harm. It breaks trust, severs continuity, and undermines autonomy. When access fades and no one intervenes, the result is structurally violent -- not because nothing was done, but because something people rely on becomes unavailable, potentially placing their bodies in harm's way.
Abandonment doesn't happen on its own. It's the outcome of decisions -- or the refusal to make them. When access that was once present disappears, the message is clear: accessibility was conditional. Inclusion was expendable.
Abandonment harms bodies, reshapes behavior and emotion, and results from decisions made by people, institutions, and culture. This page uses a biosocial lens to describe how loss of accessibility reverberates across all three.
This page is a contribution to social medicine -- mapping how abandonment of digital accessibility constitutes structural harm, and how its drivers and effects extend beyond code into bodies, institutions, and systems of care.
Why It Happens
Abandonment happens when accessibility is seen as optional, expensive, or forgettable. It follows shifts in power, priorities, and personnel -- but it's often rooted in something deeper: the belief that disabled people don't exist here, or don't matter here.
Abandonment is propped up by bias, turnover, progress rhetoric, planned obsolescence, hostility, silence, instability, and ambiguity.
Bias drives abandonment. When teams say “we don't have disabled users,” they aren't reporting a fact -- they're revealing who they imagined during design. Abandonment takes hold when accessibility is seen as a burden instead of a baseline, a luxury instead of a right.
Turnover accelerates abandonment. The people who once fought for access may leave, retire, or pass away. Their replacements may not even know what was lost -- or why it mattered. When accessibility work is embodied in individuals but not embedded in systems, access can vanish with them. Over time, responsibility diffuses, institutional memory fades, and features quietly disappear.
Modernization justifies abandonment. Leaders sometimes defend inaccessible upgrades by saying they had to “move fast” or “streamline the experience.” But what's framed as progress may actually erase prior inclusion.
Planned obsolescence rationalizes abandonment. Yes, sometimes, abandonment is planned. Accessibility may be withdrawn not because it's broken, but because supporting it gets in the way of selling something new. A tool must stop working -- or stop meeting needs -- so another can replace it. In these cases, obsolescence is manufactured. Inclusion is treated as a blocker to product strategy. What's marketed as innovation is often exclusion in a newer wrapper.
Hostility compels abandonment. In some cases, accessibility work is deliberately defunded, discredited, or dismantled. Accessibility may be reframed as political, stigmatized as wasteful, or suppressed outright. This isn't drift -- it's backlash. It's a politically motivated withdrawal of care; coercion resulting in cultural chill. It’s the result of pressure campaigns, culture war rhetoric, or ideological mandates that compel institutions that support inclusion to retreat. Abandonment becomes a form of ideological compliance.
Instability expedites abandonment. In some urgent situations, access disappears fast. Systems break under pressure -- not because emergencies make failure inevitable, but because care wasn’t embedded to withstand it. What should have been resilient collapses. What should have been maintained is left to fend for itself. Under high stakes, the result is high-speed abandonment, often too late to fix. This loss transforms vital services into immediate barriers, with severe consequences, including increased hospitalization risk. When accessibility breaks in a crisis, the instability reveals that it was always going to break. It was never built to hold.
Silence sustains abandonment. Abandonment rarely announces itself. It doesn't require cruelty -- just indifference, convenience, or an unwillingness to ask who's being left behind.
Ambiguity protects abandonment. When responsibilities are vague, standards unenforced, or documentation incomplete, it becomes easier to pretend nothing broke -- or that no one is to blame. Ambiguity lets abandonment masquerade as oversight. It prevents users from knowing what to expect, prevents teams from knowing what to maintain, and prevents accountability when access disappears. In a fog of ambiguity, harm hides in plain sight -- and is carried out with plausible deniability.
Where It Happens (ENABLE Stages)
| ENABLE Stage | How Abandonment Shows Up |
|---|---|
| Set Requirements that Include Accessibility | Accessibility is dropped from the scope of future development priorities |
| Create Accessible Content | Captions, alt text, or accessible formats are outdated or removed during migration |
| Design Accessible Experiences | Visual refreshes disregard earlier inclusive patterns and there is no continuity testing |
| Develop Accessible Implementations | Upgrades break accessibility implementations that once worked and no fallbacks are preserved |
| Test for Accessibility | Regression testing excludes accessibility scenarios that were previously covered |
| Triage and Prioritize Accessibility Issues | Known accessibility bugs are downgraded, reclassified as "feature requests", or indefinitely deferred |
| Iterate to Address Shortcomings | Features regress across iterations without response or resolution |
| Create Stopgaps | Stopgaps are left in place permanently instead of remediating underlying issues |
| Use Assistive Technologies | An update breaks screen-reader compatibility and is never addressed -- access is no longer possible for screen-reader users |
| Augment with Third-Party Tools | Critical fixes once provided by third-party scripts or extensions become unsupported or incompatible |
| Change System Settings | Platform updates override user configurations and accessible overrides are no longer respected |
| Create Workarounds | Workarounds that once enabled access become obsolete with no alternatives |
| Use Humans for Assistance | Channels for human assistance are eliminated, leaving users without a fallback when automation fails |
| Submit Feedback to Creators | Reports of regressions are acknowledged as bugs, but never fixed. They're eventually closed as "WONTFIX" without a satisfactory workaround. |
| Assert One's Rights | Legal protections that once ensured access are reversed or gutted. States preempt stronger local laws and sue to reverse federal laws. Courts narrow ADA interpretations (e.g., limiting the definition of “public accommodation” in digital spaces). Federal agencies drop enforcement. Access that was once won is now stripped away. |
| Stage a Protest | Protests are ignored or retaliated against, and no solutions are created -- the withdrawn access is never restored |
| Switch to an Alternative | The original tool becomes unusable -- updates halt, bugs accumulate, and compatibility breaks. However, no alternatives preserve the same function. What once enabled participation now prevents it. |
How It Disables
Abandonment disables by revoking function -- breaking workflows, removing features, or severing access that people depend on. It turns previously accessible systems into barriers, often without warning.
- It undermines reliability, making users hesitant to trust even well-designed tools.
- It interrupts autonomy, forcing users to re-learn, re-route, or re-seek support for once-simple tasks.
- It disorients: systems behave differently than before, but users receive no notice or support.
- It erodes resilience: every act of compensation costs energy -- and when care disappears, that burden falls solely on the user.
- It displaces labor: instead of being sustained by pre-launch interventions, access must now be rebuilt from scratch -- by the people most harmed.
Abandonment disables by removing bridges that once made participation possible.
Why It Matters
Abandonment gets into the body, into behavior, and into systems.
Accessibility abandonment is not just a technical issue -- it's a social signal. It tells people with disabilities that they were never the priority, their inclusion was temporary, and their access was always conditional -- valued only when convenient.
Abandonment forces people with disabilities to compensate: to hack, adapt, or call for help, These are not choices -- they are survival strategies in the absence of care.
Abandonment costs more. Organizations that remove or regress accessibility often face increased support tickets, legal risk, reputational damage, and user churn. Fixing regressions post-release is more expensive than preserving access throughout. Rebuilding lost processes, retraining teams, restoring institutional memory, and re-earning trust takes more time, effort, and money than sustaining it in the first place.
Abandonment erodes autonomy. People who had built routines, jobs, and lives around accessible systems are suddenly forced to start over -- often without warning, support, or alternatives. This loss isn't abstract: it can block someone from applying for a job, refilling a prescription, renewing a license, or booking transit.
Abandonment undermines public trust and safety. Accessible digital services enable access to healthcare, transportation, education, and disaster alerts. When access disappears, outcomes are harmed -- including increased hospitalization risk, preventable fines, missed deadlines, and loss of income.
Abandonment undermines progress. Every hard-fought gain that is withdrawn must be fought for again. Hard-won access becomes fragile. When people see prior victories undone, they're less likely to trust future promises. The message to disabled people is clear: nothing stays accessible unless you keep demanding it.
Abandonment inflicts harm. In many ways, abandonment is more damaging than primordial neglect because it withdraws something people have come to rely on. More than technical failure, it causes grief, disorientation, devastation, and fatigue. It fosters mistrust and teaches people to expect betrayal. Over time, some stop asking. Others stop showing up.
Abandonment reactivates trauma. The fear of abandonment is a well-documented trauma response -- one that many disabled people already carry from medical neglect, social exclusion, or institutional betrayal. Inaccessibility deepens that wound. Each broken login or vanished caption confirms what experience has already taught: inclusion is fleeting, and care can disappear without warning. This isn't overreaction -- it's recognition.
Abandonment rewires behavior. After enough betrayals, people learn not to reach. Some avoid updates. Some stop filing tickets. Some stop expecting accessibility at all. What looks like withdrawal is often self-protection -- a way to reduce the pain of being let down again.
Real-World Examples
- A government site that once had a plain-text alternative silently removes it during rebranding.
- A screen reader-friendly layout is quietly replaced with a visual refresh that ignores prior usability testing.
- A formerly accessible transit app no longer works with screen readers after a “modernization” push.
- A once-accessible booking form becomes unusable after a JavaScript framework upgrade.
- A CMS upgrade breaks keyboard navigation. It stays broken for months.
- A streaming platform removes captions from archived content after redesign.
- A redesign breaks alt-text rendering in a journal site. No one notices until researchers file complaints months later.
- A browser extension that fixed a longstanding barrier becomes incompatible with a new version. No alternative is offered.
What Care Sounds Like
“We've budgeted for long-term accessibility -- not just launch.”
“This redesign won't ship until we confirm it doesn't break screen reader workflows.”
“We're tracking regressions and restoring anything that was lost.”
“We included disabled testers from the start -- and after each update.”
“We know this feature used to work, and we're sorry it no longer does. We're prioritizing its return.”
“We're building a regression suite that includes accessibility.”
“Accessibility isn't a feature. It's our responsibility.”
What Neglect Sounds Like
“We had to move fast.”
"We don't have disabled users."
“Accessibility wasn't in the new scope.”
“It broke during the upgrade -- we'll look at it later.”
“Nobody complained.”
“It's no longer a priority.”
“It's in the backlog.”
Accessibility lost is still a form of inaccessibility. ENABLE names this tendency so we don't normalize it.
Have you roped any conclusions from the riddles that you found? -- Lissie
Edited by Lawrence Weru, alum of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.