Clearer ownership, better handovers and more honest estimates help teams make better accessibility decisions. But eventually, someone will ask me:
How do we know any of this is working?
And I could point to closed tickets, the training we completed or the shrunk backlog. Those things certainly tell us something about the work we've done. But do they tell us it's working?
Probably not.
I'd be more interested in what changed for the user.
Can they book an appointment they couldn't book before? Can they finish without asking someone for help? Are they still calling us because the online flow is too difficult or doesn't work for them?
Those questions tell me more than any stats I could glimpse from the ticket tracker.
If we get fewer issues reported, it might mean we've improved the product, but it might also mean we're testing less. The lack of complaints might mean patients are managing well. Or it might mean that they've given up without telling us.
I don't think there's one number that fully answers that question. But there's a way to narrow it down perhaps. I'd certainly start with a few essential tasks and look at evidence from testing, support conversations and actual use.
That gives us a way to judge whether what we're doing is really helping people and where we should focus next.
How do we judge this though? What should we measure, what we usually miss and what happens with unresolved accessibility issues we never knew about?
At the end of the day, I want to be able to tell you more than "we fixed the issues, so it must be working."