We need more understanding, not more empathy.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own. — Henry Ford

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As an industry of accessibility professionals, we talk a lot about building empathy. The theory being that if people building products, services and experiences truly empathized with people who have disabilities, they’d create products, services and experiences that worked well for people with disabilities. On the surface, that makes sense. But what if we’ve all got it wrong? What if, when we talk about building empathy, we really mean building understanding?

Empathy is defined as “the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” Empathy is a powerful human quality. Those who have mastered it, or have an innate talent for it, have the ability to step completely into the experiences of another and emotionally connect to those experiences. When you are more emotionally connected to the challenges that exist for a group of people, you are more aware of the kinds of barriers you need to work to remove in the experiences you build. But can you actually teach people how to be more empathetic?

Simon Baron Cohen says that “empathy is a skill like any other human skill. If you get a chance to…