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Lack of strategy

1 minute read

There's no such thing as perfect.

You'll ship bugs. You'll release some features that won't work as you intended them to.

These are unavoidable.

But there's one other kind of issue you can and should avoid. When you ignore accessibility and not invest in training your team, you're making a choice that says accessibility is an afterthought.

You can't turn around later and blame users for struggling with your product if you haven't built it with them in mind.

Your product’s accessibility strategy is the problem. Not your users or their tools.

You think the flashy animations are more important than keyboard navigation? You think skipping the alt text for images will save you time as will releasing features without testing with a screen reader?

Think again!

What you're doing is sending the message that accessibility isn't a priority while ignoring a significant protion of your customers.

That's not a choice you want to make on purpose.

A much better alternative is to start everything with accessibility in mind, invest in training your team, testing your product with real users, especially users with disabilities, and constantly measuring and improving.

And when someone asks you why you're doing these things, just say:

We're doing these things on purpose, because they matter.

Did you enjoy this bite-sized message?

I send out short emails like this every day to help you gain a fresh perspective on accessibility and understand it without the jargon, so you can build more robust products that everyone can use, including people with disabilities.

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