In this book, I refuse to advocate the unnecessary compromise of visual sophistication for accessibility. But I will not advocate the compromise of accessibility for visual sophistication, either. If you have to noticeably alter your layout to make it accessible, that’s what I’ll tell you to do. But if, as is nearly always the case, it is possible to provide accessibility with no visible alteration whatsover, I will tell you exactly how to do it. It simply is not the case that appearance is more important than accessibility. Nor is it less important. Neither is it a question of “balancing” the two, as if they were incompatible. Zero-sum arithmetic is irrelevant here.Yes, you can design a site with a higher or a lower calibre of graphic design, and the entire edifice of Web accessibility as we know it is built around incremental compliance levels.You have lots of leeway. But despite what you have heard, appearance need not come at the wholesale expense of access, or vice-versa.
Source: http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/AccessManifesto.html
