Amanda Unvarnished

Yeah technically that whole "accessibility improves SEO" thing isnt true except in some pretty narrow circumstances, but I have absolutely used it to get more accessibility sneaked into a site when it's not part of the explicit goals of the client. I much prefer clients who consider accessibility as part and parcel of the project though because when we get a remediation project it's almost always because the client got themselves into trouble which is the worst possible scenario to be doing any of this under.

I'd check the box and see what happens. You're likely in some sort of AI tech support loop and it might get you out of it to the old process. People who don't constantly need accessibility nonetheless benefiting from it is kind of baked into the process, (see virtual personal assistants like Siri and Alexa for example), and it's not only blind people who use screen readers. Some people use them for purely advantageous reasons like being able to read a ton of text while driving. When I worked for a commercial screen reader vendor, I took a call from a firefighter who literally did this exact thing and needed his display chain repaired so the screen reader would work correctly.

That sucks. Should we fire Friday on your behalf?

It's the eleventh. I'm so sorry you're going through this and hope it gets resolved because that sounds like the kind of bullshit you get when you tell the tech you use a screen reader and they're still telling you to look at something and click on it.