It's almost Christmas.
Why is that important?
Presents. And last minute product releases.
Half the world is shopping for a toy for their neighbor's son's girlfriend's dog. The other half is desperately pushing code before the year-end code freeze.
Of course accessibility is forgotten in all this commotion. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you today.
Today, I want to focus on the previous release. The one before this holiday code freeze.
The one where you fixed loads of accessibility issues. The same one that apparently introduced a bunch of bugs because of your accessibility fixes.
How funny is it that after you work on a bunch of accessibility tickets, the next release people start thinking any bug is probably "caused by accessibility?"
I'm not being very cheerful and maybe a bit too sarcastic, sure.
But wouldn't you be?
Wouldn't you be pissed off if the one sprint you finally got the green light to work on accessibility somehow became the sprint that "caused all the bugs?"
Never mind that the release also includes a complete refactor of the entire navigation system. Or that the front-end framework was upgraded to a version with breaking changes. Or that the release also included three more features that were rushed out the door.
Nope. Forget all that. The problem is accessibility. Obviously.
Because nothing says "root cause analysis" like blaming the thing that makes your product work for more people. The thing you had to fight the entire year to get prioritised in the first place.
Welcome to December. The code freeze ends in January.
This nonsense doesn't.