Yesterday, I said you have two paths to make a change in your organisation. You either change how people think or you change what they do. Let's start with thinking.
Changing how someone thinks about accessibility means they start to notice it without being told to. They spot a problem in a design and say something. They ask the right questions without a checklist in front of them. It becomes part of how they work.
That's the goal. That's really powerful. But it's dang hard to get there.
That's because most people have never struggled to use a website. They can see, use a mouse and read small light grey text. Accessibility problems are invisible to them, not because they don't care, but because they've never had to care.
You can change that.
The simplest and most effective way I've seen is to make the invisible visible.
Show them a video of someone using a screen reader trying to move around your product. Sit a developer in front of a keyboard and ask them to use it without touching the mouse. Bring in someone with a disability to meet and talk with your team.
Sure, you could sign people up on a training course. Or even mandate accessibility training in on-boarding. Sadly, I've never seen it work. Training doesn't stick without reinforcement. Anyone can sit through a workshop, nod along and genuinely mean it. But then they go back to their desks and continue working like nothing happened, because there was no personal impact.
I'm looking for an "oh shit!" moment. Those are the reactions that stick.
But you can't force that reaction. Yes, you can create the conditions for it, but you can't guarantee it. Some people will watch someone with a disability struggle and genuinely change how they think. Others will feel bad for five minutes and move on.
It also takes time. Change in thinking happens through repeated exposure, not a single workshop. And when you need to ship-ship-ship, all that new thinking is usually the first thing to go.
Plus, if the people making decisions don't visibly back it up, that new thinking fades fast. You can start asking the right questions in design reviews, but if those questions keep getting brushed aside because there's no time, you'll eventually stop asking. It's not because you don't care, but because the environment rewards old behaviour instead of new thinking.
Changing thinking works best when people are given the space to think. And most teams aren't.