The calendar notification pops up on my screen. "Weekly Product Accessibility Check-in" starting in 15 minutes.
My stomach knots. The invite came through last night at 9:47 PM with no agenda, just a vague "Let's discuss our accessibility progress" note and a bunch of people from most departments.
I sign in to the Zoom meeting room five minutes early, pencil and notebook at the ready. By 10:05, only half the people have shown up.
Mark, our product manager, shows up on screen at 10:08, still grinding his coffee beans. He apologies for being late and mutes himself as he continues grinding the coffee beans.
He interrupted Jess from marketing who was sharking her weekend plans. It looks like she wants to go to the zoo.
Mark is back. "Right, shall we get started," as if we haven't been waiting. "Sorry about that - I really need my coffee."
I take a deep breath. We're ten minutes in to what is supposed to be a one-hour meeting.
Mark thanks everyone for joining and quickly makes a roll-call for everyone present. Another five minutes go puff.
"So, where are we with the accessibility improvements?" Mark asks, looking around the room.
Dave from development jumps in.
"Well, we've been really busy with the new feature launch, so we haven't had much time to look at the WCAG stuff."
This is the exact same update he gave last week. And the week before.
Emma, our UX lead who actually knows about accessibility, sits quietly in the corner, typing occasional notes. She's tried to speak up in previous meetings but people usually talk over her.
"I think we need to understand what these accessibility guidelines actually mean for us," says Tom, a senior manager who's attending for the first time. "Can someone explain why we need to do all this? Seems like a lot of work for not much benefit. We don't have disabled people using our product."
I watch Emma's face. She explained all this in detail three meetings ago, complete with slides and user research. She starts to respond, but Mark jumps in.
"That's a good point, Tom. Maybe we can review the notes from previous meetings before we continue."
My attention drifts as Tom launches into a story about how people who are blind cannot use our product because they are not in the target for the industry. "And in case, the WCAG is complex and left to interpretation. What they've written there cannot apply to our product." I glance around the Zoom room. Two people are focused on their screens and I can clearly see they're loudly typing.
Half an hour in, we finally touch on the actual blocker. We need design and development time allocated to fix the navigation issues we identified a few weeks ago.
Dave and the front-end developer launch into a detailed technical discussion about ARIA attributes and DOM focus management. I watch the marketing team's eyes glaze over while our senior developer checks his phone. Meanwhile, Emma tries to simplify the explanation, but Stephanie interrupts with questions about how this affects the legal page that only her team uses.
We sit through 10 minutes of discussion about the legal page that gets less than 0.01% of our traffic.
The designers look bored. The developers look confused. And still, no one has addressed the actual issue. We know the problem, we know the solution. We simply need dedicated time to do the work.
"Let's monitor the situation," Mark finally says pulling me out of my slumber. "We'll see where we are next week."
I feel a flash of frustration. We know exactly where we'll be next week. In the same Zoom room, having the same conversation.
As we approach the hour mark, I hope we might finish on time.
But then Eric from ops raises his hand. "Just one quick thing before we go..."
His "quick thing" takes 15 minutes.
By the time we wrap up, it's 11:23.
We've gone well over without resolving anything. No action points. No owners. No decisions. Just a vague "See you all next week!"
Emma sighs. I can feel her pain. She pings me on Slack right after and says "I've got wireframes that address most of these issues. I tried to share them last month."
I nod sympathetically and can only reply with an exhausted-face emoji. We both know they'll never see the light of day.
Back in silence, I turn away from my monitor. I need 10 minutes with no calls, no chats and no emails. Just 10 minutes to decompress and clear my head before diving back into actual work.
I stare out the window and count to 60 slowly, trying to let the frustration melt away. I usually do some box breathing exercises, but today isn't one of those days when I can tune out.
I open my Todoist and add a personal item: "Prepare actual agenda for next week's accessibility meeting."
Someone has to break this cycle.
It might as well be me.
This story is fictional, yes. But it's based on actual events that occur in offices around the world every single weekday. I've changed the names to protect the not-so-innocent, though every "Mark" reading this just felt strangely attacked. No productive time was harmed in the writing of this email. It was already thoroughly obliterated in the countless meetings that inspired it.
So, does this mean we should just kill meetings altogether then?
No. Some meetings are actually worth having, when done right. I'll show you how.
Over to you!
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