> I think the accessibility consultants like this state of affairs: they can threaten more lawsuits and extract more in consulting fees.

I think there is truth in this. A lot of the assistive technology (AT) vendors, also sell consultancy.

Go to the Vispero career pages (who develop JAWS for Windows) and a big chunk of the jobs are remote consultancy roles advising clients on accessibility errors and selling for billable hours.

What makes a web page accessible? Why, it has to work with JAWS, of course!

Vispero makes a lot of money from this; the consultants are all in India, the clients are all in the West, so they can hoover up the difference. I get the impression most AT vendors are extremely cheap, which may explain why it takes decades for them to improve things