[mwcampbell]

> flexibility in UI/UX design that is available on the Web

If you take advantage of that flexibility to create a UX that's very different from the standard widgets, it's likely to be inaccessible to blind users with screen readers. Check out this rant on HN from a blind friend of mine (a few paragraphs in for the part that's most relevant to this thread):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14580342

As far as I know, the most accessible cross-platform UI toolkit for the desktop is SWT. It uses native widgets for most things, and actually gasp implements the host platforms' accessibility APIs for the custom widgets. But, I can hear it now, somebody will say they hate SWT-based applications because they wreak of Windows 95. Oh well, fashion trumps all, I guess.