You're staring at an accessibility audit. And ouch! It's almost 50 pages of issues with descriptions, links to WCAG success criteria, how to test them and what to do about it. It's all sorts of things like missing form labels, contrast problems and keyboard navigation broken in three different ways.
That's a lot to take in! Your stomach just drops. Where the hell do you even start?
This is where most people go wrong. They try to fix everything at once. They burn out. Their team burns out. And they don't ship anything worthwhile.
They try to boil the ocean.
Don't.
Find what matters.
Which issue is breaking things for most people? What do people complain about most of the time so incessantly that your customer support team wants to quit? Which process is so broken that fixing it cascades into fixing ten other things? That's where you start.
Maybe it's a form pattern that's broken everywhere. Fix that template or component and suddenly dozens of forms are accessible.
Maybe it's your navigation used on every page. If you get that right, you've moved the needle significantly.
This matters because you build momentum. And momentum is real. When you ship fixes and people see progress, they believe you. They start to trust you. They buy in. You build credibility instead of appearing like you're fighting an endless battle.
Pick the things that'll make the biggest difference with the least amount of headache and start there.
Everything else will still be there. But at least you'll have actually shipped something that makes an impact.
Impact is the sixth thing on my list of 10 things you should focus on.