Join fellow like-minded product owners looking to learn and contribute to authentic conversations on accessibility and inclusive design packed into just 5 minutes a day.
Start small and improve consistently
Yesterday, I encouraged you to find your stride instead of aiming to be the pack leader in accessibility. So where can you begin? Here are three practical suggestions: Your backlog Just look at what's in front of you. If you already have clearly documented accessibility issues in your backlog, that's the ideal starting point. Especially if your users with disabilities highlighted those issues. Clearly they want to use your website and, for some reason, they can't. By fixing these concerns, you're making your website more accessible to those who genuinely want to use it. Your website homepage Or whatever the most important page on your website: checkout page, shopping cart, contact page. As long as this page is on the critical path for a user, you know fixing any accessibility errors there will improve your bottom line. Use tools like Wave or axe DevTools to scan for errors. Pay attention to common issues like low contrast text, missing alternative text for images, empty links, missing form label inputs, and ensuring proper document language. Be open to feedback Make it easy for your users to give you feedback. Give them a place where they can report issues specifically related to accessibility. Create an email address like accessibility[at]yourorganisation[dot]com and let your customers know they can report issues here. Clearly communicate how you plan to address their feedback. Here's the thing. Instead of getting bogged down in industry standards, focus on these low-hanging fruits for incremental improvements. Every small improvement is a victory, and consistent efforts will compound over time. Will this make you the industry leader? No. But is that really your goal? |
Ship accessible websites. Faster.
Join fellow like-minded product owners looking to learn and contribute to authentic conversations on accessibility and inclusive design packed into just 5 minutes a day.
Does this sound familiar? The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 but somehow at 9:06 Zoom still says "Waiting for host to start the meeting." When it finally starts, the organiser casually mutters "sorry, previous thing ran long" while fumbling with screen sharing. It's okay though, because they'll happily steal those minutes back by running fifteen minutes over the scheduled end time. Everyone waiting lost those first minutes. And everyone with a follow-up commitment will nervously look at the...
It's very tempting to hand over responsibility over accessibility to other people. If you're a developer, it's the designer's job. If you're the designer, the developer needs to implement accessibility. If you're the product owner, it's the tester's job to make sure everything works with assistive technology. This is easy. Because if someone else accepts responsibility, then we're off the hook. I see two problems with this: 1. Someone else must always be willing to accept the responsibility...
Accessibility. 13 letters. We thought it was such a lenghty word that we use the numeronym a11y to write it out. It has all these definitions floating around, each one just slightly different than the next. I think the reason why we can't settle on just one is simply because, like the word itself, accessibility is a loaded concept. It's just like a bulky piece of luggage you lug around and when you finally set it down on the floor and start to unpack, it'll likely fill the room. The...