[jrootabega]

The odds of anyone actually responding to you instead of just demonizing you, condescending to you, or talking past you are very slim, although a couple people have made good faith responses.

Something they haven't said yet is that a lot of accessibility features are already a solved problem, or they're commonplace enough that they seem to be. So a big publisher (which is what your parent was referring to) would be able to get them in at low cost, relative to gigantic overall costs of publishing any AAA game. So it makes sense for them to do it to reach everyone they can. And they know people will write articles like this one and bring them publicity, and if not they'll just astroturf one anyway. The author of that article has had at least one other accessibility-related article published on the gaming web recently, so don't assume they're not just on a press junket.

For all developers, your question is more of a question. Should every single game developed by every single type of developer be "accessible"? It would certainly be nice, but must they? Of course not.