Accessibility is a bug. You catch when it took hold already. And you want to fix the symptoms.
That's how most see accessibility.
And it's the wrong mental model.
I have a better one.
Focus on the inputs you control and the outputs will follow.
Think about what your team touches every day. Product decisions, like what to build. The design briefs you give your design team. The acceptance criteria you lay out for the devs. The definition of done you write for your QA team. And what questions you ask, and don't ask, in sprint planning.
Those are your inputs. That's what's completely under your control right now. And right now, most of those say nothing about accessibility.
So why would you expect the output to be accessible?
It won't. Accessibility doesn't happen by accident.
You need to ask better questions. Questions like "how will this work with a keyboard?" And you need to ask them before writing your first line of code. And before you fire up Figma or whatever design tool you use.
I've heard this quite a few times and it bears repeating. Accessibility is hard, expensive and slows things down. And yes, it's true. But it's only true when you only ever touch accessibility at the end of your process. When the cost is highest.
But if you fix it upstream...Hmm, but how?
Right now, you're asking the wrong question. "How do we fit accessibility on our roadmap?"
What if you asked instead "What decisions are we making before even considering accessibility?"
- Are our user stories written with diverse users in mind or do they just assume "the average user?"
- Are we testing our design system with assistive technology or only a mouse?
- When something ships, who signs it off and do they know what to look for?
You already have a process. There's no need to change it. Instead, ask the right questions as part of that process.
Start there and see what happens.