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.
You don't have to lead the pack, just find your stride
There are organisations that are extremely accessibility-conscious. They incorporate accessibility at all levels of the organisation. Their products are thought, designed and developed with accessibility at the forefront. Product design specs include accessibility guidance, the development team ships accessible user interfaces, and each release goes through both manual and automated accessibility testing. They deliberately seek out and evaluate input from users with disabilities. They fight the good fight and encourage everyone else to do so as well. And then there are organisations that are very vocal about not caring about accessibility. They don't have users who are disabled so they don't see why they should consider them at all in their SDLC. (whether a lack of accessibility comes before the lack of users with disabilities or the other way around is the subject of another email) Most organisations aren't either. They sit somewhere in the middle, along a spectrum. Their teams are either not aware of accessibility or aren't making it a priority. The thinking is "it is what it is." They're not against accessibility. They're just skeptical it's something that should have priority over releasing new features. After all, it takes time to consider people with disabilities when planning and time to design and annotate the designs for a proper handoff to development. It takes time to write accessible code and then to test it and maintain it. So they figure they need proper training for all this. That takes more time and more money. Everyone at all levels needs to be involved. They need to write policies, put processes in place, make sure they are used consistently, and are regularly reviewed. That starts to sound like a major change in the organisation, no longer a small fix here and there. It all sounds too much for where they are right now. And it is. And it's ok. No one expects them to jump ahead on that spectrum and do it all at once. It's fine to do some fixes this sprint and postpone some for next sprint. It's fine to not think about the long term plan right now. It's fine to say I'm not there yet, but I'd like to be and here's what I'm doing to get there soon. Not every organisation needs to be a leader in accessibility, shaping the future and spearheading the industry. Where you are right now is fine! Prepare the next step and take it. |
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...