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.

Grounding

W3C warns that when one part of the accessibility chain is weak, users may compensate through work-arounds that require much more effort and still may not produce a usable experience.¹

The legal record recognizes workaround labor too. The Copyright Office has long created Section 1201 exemptions for literary works when access controls interfere with read-aloud or screen-reader access, acknowledging that blind users sometimes have to circumvent the original delivery system just to get an accessible copy.²

Research on video-conferencing accessibility found that none of the major platforms studied were fully accessible.³ Campaigns against low-quality auto-captions likewise document users replaying videos, cross-checking text, or abandoning content altogether when builders do not provide accessible media.⁴

Damon Beres documented blind readers seeking alternate copies and bypass routes because the default product was not usable as delivered.⁵

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.

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Footnotes

1. W3C WAI: Essential Components of Web Accessibility ↩

2. U.S. Copyright Office: Statement of the Librarian of Congress Relating to Section 1201 Rulemaking ↩

3. Behaviour & Information Technology: How accessible are digital video conferencing applications? A comparative study of disabled people's experiences ↩

4. 3Play Media: The Problem with Using Auto Captions in Higher Education ↩

5. Damon Beres, WIRED, E-Books Are More Accessible Than Ever. That Still Isn't Good Enough ↩