Imagine your product is just about ready for prime time. Then someone mentions accessibility.
Suddenly you're scrambling to add alt text, fix colour contrast and make everything work with screen readers. It's messy, expensive and frankly a bit backwards.
This is exactly why so many products fail accessibility audits and exclude millions of users.
Accessibility isn't a feature you can add on. When you make it part of your process from day one, something magical happens. It becomes natural rather than a burden.
Designers start choosing colour palettes that work for everyone.
Developers write semantic HTML without thinking twice.
You create clear, simple copy that benefits all your users.
Building accessibility in from the beginning saves you money and time. Retrofitting costs quite a lot more than getting it right initially. That's how you avoid the expensive redesign cycles and the frantic pre-launch fixes.
Plus, accessible design improves usability for everyone.
Those clear headings that help screen reader users? They make your content easier to scan for all users. The keyboard navigation that assists people with motor disabilities? It speeds up power users too.
Now you might think you need to become an accessibility expert overnight. Absolutely not!
Start with the basics. Make sure your designs have proper contrast ratios, your forms have clear labels and your content follows a logical structure.
If right now you're thinking "we'll fix it later," make a shift to "we'll build it right."
Your users, all of them, deserve better than an accessibility afterthought.