When someone new joins a team, they come in all giggly and excited. Everything is possible.
They want to change everyone. They want to change everything. No existing process is quite right and every process should be improved.
Over time, they discover both people and processes are resilient. Designers have their workflows. Developers have their libraries. Product owners have their roadmaps. Everyone's been shipping all these years without thinking about accessibility.
And it's worked for them.
By our very nature, we resist change. And that's especially true when we feel change is coming from outside, from somewhere out of our control. When we didn't ask for it.
And when we see it'll touch everything we know.
This may be because we fear we'll lose control or we fear the unknown. Our immune system kicks in.
We can't change everyone and everything all at once.
But if we're very specific and very clear about the benefits of change, we just might change enough.
Undoing years of deeply ingrained processes that result in inaccessible products isn't possible in one sprint. You can't make every button accessible, every form perfect, every image properly labeled in one sprint.
So you need to learn to be specific.
Instead of "everything must change," it's "if we add proper focus states to these interactive elements, keyboard users can use the form."
You make the benefits become real. You can measure them. You can connect them to real people trying to do real things.
You've not given up on changing everything. You've figured out that specific, clear, beneficial changes could add up to everything over time.
If we want to succeed at accessibility, we can't come in swinging. We're more likely to make meaningful change if we pick our battles, prove the value and let the momentum build.