Their creation has a bad UI. The barrier is a part of the work. You could take the swearing out of The Godfather in order to make it more accessible, but what people would be accessing would not really be The Godfather anymore.
The swearing in The GodFather is an important part of the story. It contributes to the end goal of those who made the film. The bad UI in Dwarf Fortress is not deliberate. It is the result of neglect of that aspect of the game. People who play the game and enjoy it do so despite the UI. I have yet to meet someone who thinks the existing UI makes the game better in any way.
It's not clear from your original top level post whether you've played the game and are complaining about the UI quirks described elsewhere in this thread, or if you're talking about the ASCII art.
If you're talking about the interface design, keyboard commands etc, ignore this comment.
If you're talking about the ASCII art I would say it absolutely is deliberate. DF is actually a sequel (Slaves to Armok, God of Blood, Chapter 2: Dwarf Fortress) and the first game was 3D. They chose to make DF a roguelike ASCII art game because if they had tried anything else, it wouldn't be half as deep as it is now. The ASCII art enables the depth that the game has developed.
As I said, if you are primarily arguing that they should keep the ASCII art and revamp the interface, you can safely ignore this comment.
