Low-quality standards are themselves an access issue, and I think are reinforced by the paid-access rule, since that means the people reading the standards are a narrower group who is more specialized in dealing with ISO standards, who are more prone to become blind to “that’s just the way ISO standards are”.
ANSI (also paid access) standards such as the whole ASC X-12 suite widely used in industry and a portion of which is mandated federally for healthcare under HIPAA are a complete nightmare mess, too. (And it doesn't help that not only are they paid-access standards, but they often incorporate by reference literally hundreds of other, largely paid access, standards from other bodies, some of which have become obsolete and are no longer available when the standard referencing them remains mandated.)
I am currently a member of TC184/SC4 and have also been a member of TC22/SC31.
If they write the text of the standard, that means ISO writes the text of the standard.
For the TC22/SC31 work I was just being paid by my employer and they provided the travel costs to meetings.
The scope of TC184/SC4 is much bigger, the core people work on it pretty much full time and get paid by industry consortia to deliver something that will meet their needs. Some parts have been written by postgraduate students who got their PhD out of the work.