Create Workarounds

Workarounds are user-devised or community-shared solutions that bypass inaccessible features. These may include custom scripts, browser extensions, hacks, or alternative interaction flows. Users resort to them when accessibility was not adequately addressed during development, leaving them to "patch" access themselves.

Role in the ENABLE Model

This navigator-side compensation arises when upstream care -- especially during design, development, and testing -- has failed. The burden shifts from the builder to the end-user, who is forced to adapt or be excluded.

warning

Workarounds run the risk of normalizing the idea that institutions don't have to change since we've figured out how to live around them.

Why it happens

Workarounds happen when developers neglect inclusive practices and fail to anticipate diverse user needs. With no built-in solution, users must either quit or find their own. This is especially common when organizations prioritize speed or aesthetics over compliance and usability.

Examples

In the news

#nomoreCRAPtions: The Problem with Using Auto Captions (2023)
-- 3Play Media

• Deaf activist Rikki Poynter's #nomoreCRAPtions movement highlights how auto-generated captions -- often with accuracy as low as 57.5% -- force deaf users to create workarounds: watching content multiple times, cross-referencing transcripts, or simply abandoning inaccessible media. When accessible content isn't provided, users must compensate with significant additional labor.

DMCA Section 1201 Accessibility Exemption Renewed (2024)
-- Wired

• The Librarian of Congress renewed exemptions allowing blind users to bypass DRM on e-books to create accessible formats when publishers fail to provide them. This legal protection legitimizes user workarounds -- but it also codifies a system where the burden of accessibility falls on disabled individuals rather than publishers who should provide accessible content from the start.

A comparative study of disabled people's experiences with video conferencing tools (2024)
-- Behaviour & Information Technology

• A 2024 study found that none of the major video conferencing tools (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Skype) were fully accessible. This can result in users creating workarounds -- labor that wouldn't be necessary if platforms were designed with deaf users in mind.

• Writing a Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey script to re-label buttons with accessible text
• Injecting custom CSS to make focus outlines visible
• Using bookmarklets to simulate keyboard shortcuts
• End-users create a shared Google Doc or Notion page as an alternative, parallel resource because a workplace tool is inaccessible to screen readers.

Compensation sounds like

"I wrote a script that adds keyboard focus to the menu."
"I had to override the styles just to read the text on this website."
"I created a Chrome extension that fixes this for me." "My whole team uses Slack, but I'm stuck using email because the keyboard shortcuts in Slack don't work consistently for me."

Burden sounds like

"I had to learn JavaScript just to use my own school's site."
"Why do I have to fix this myself when they have an entire dev team?"
"I'm afraid the next update will break my workaround." "Everyone else is using it at work, but I can't. So I'm always behind or left out of team updates."

Real-world Scenario

Jade, who has a motor disability, visits a university's registration portal that traps keyboard focus inside a calendar widget. Rather than abandon the process, she writes a quick JavaScript snippet to force focus past the widget.

Two weeks later, a site update breaks her fix. She must now maintain it across multiple devices while juggling classes and assignments. The institution never knew her name, but her burden was real.