I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not, but it seems like a subtle way of reducing the stigma of standing out when needing accessible accommodations to work effectively with computers. Keeping tweaks to UI behaviors to accommodate ways folks have to work along side with ways folks like to work blends them all together.

Or that "people with special needs" are not so different from the rest of us.

It's the same on Android and Windows 10. Some of my favorite settings on both systems are hidden away in the Accessibility (Android) or Ease of Access (Windows) panels.

In particular, each system has a setting to turn off animations for a calmer experience.

On Windows you can make the text cursor thicker so it's easier to see on a high-DPI display, and select a black mouse pointer instead of the default white.

There are a bunch more - worth a look around even if you don't think you have any accessibility needs.

I think this perhaps comes from the decades-long use of “accessibility” as euphemism for “application preference settings needed by handicapped people”. It never really meant “accessibility” alone without the euphemistic baggage.

It seems to me that the gradient from “application state” to “color scheme/theme” to “preferences” to “accessibility” is a continuous one, and we are still treating it from a mental model standpoint as discrete buckets.

Now it’s back to being used in the literal meaning of the term, which, as you pointed out, is basis for confusion. This is one reason why I try hard to avoid euphemism in general; imprecision that results in context-specific definition drift makes for needlessly messy communication.

It's probably a subtle, arrogant hint that if you have other UI preferences than the gods at Apple, you're "special". ;-)

The feature was probably added to suit people with some visual impairment, and not really for those with different taste.

The fact that others can used it is just a side effect.

(At least that's what I'd guess given Apple's usual approach to UX)