[omar_a1]

I'm glad that you were able to deliver a product that helped with accessibility, but part of the considerable effort it took was just in trying to understand what someone else's perspective is. It's less efficient than simply having a member of the team with real lived experience that can answer common-sense questions that your team agonized over answering.

And not to say this happened in your case, but even with that considerable effort, it's still very easy to end up with blind spots in your product that a more diverse team would have caught.

It's the same as hiring for any other level of experience for more routine technical skills. If your team has no experience in this area, they'd need to expend a much greater degree of effort to answer questions that someone who is experienced would already have known the answer to.