@grammargirl the team I'm on has put accessibility as our number one priority for years now. We think it's the right thing to do, in general, but especially because we maintain a public university website!
It is so surprising to me when I meet other web developers and I mention that such-and-such new trend/feature wouldn't be accessible and they say "so?"
Or when I mention spending time with our technical writers to make the copy on our forms easy to understand and they say "why?"
Clear instructions don't only benefit 80 year olds, or people with limited comprehension, it just saves your brain a few processor cycles.
Given how much of our lives are managed by web apps, I think everyone's lives would be happier if companies and project managers were mindful of basic user experience issues when scoping out the budget for these things.
