Can Your Website See Me Back

I wrote a poem about what it feels like to navigate the web with assistive technology—and what it really means for a website to “see” us back.

Can Your Website See Me Back
I come to your door with a cursor in my hand.
You glow like a city I may never understand.
You read me in one glance, a single neon track.
I tune in like a radio and ask, under my breath:
Can your website see me back?
Can your website see me back?

Sometimes it’s just a house with all the signs torn down,
hallways with no numbers in a nameless part of town,
forms that feel like riddles with the last clue torn in half,
every missing label widening the gap.
You click once; I map each crack, still asking:
Can your website see me back?

Then I find the places where I feel you saw my face,
where the signs are spoken clearly, like a friend who knows my name,
where the buttons offer handshakes, not just shapes inside a frame,
where doubt slips off the rail and I can trust the track.
There your website doesn’t just exist;
it finally sees me back.
Can your website see me back?
Can your website see me back?

So when you wire up your pages in the quiet of your craft,
remember someone’s there in headphones, tracing every path.
Ask yourself while you build it,
in the code and in the cracks:
“Can my website see them back?
Can my website see them back?”