If everyone on your team assumes someone else will handle it, accessibility debt will pile up.
So the first step to build team accountability is to assign clear roles. Without clearly defined ownership, critical tasks will fall through the cracks.
I've seen my share of forms on the web that fail even the most basic accessibility checks and I couldn't help but wonder how could they ship this garbage?
Simple. The devs thought QA tested it and QAs thought the product owner was aware and it'll get prioritised. But there was no one ultimately responsible for the end result. And no one was responsible for all the in-between hand-offs.
Without accountability, gaps become inevitable. When you assign clear responsibilities to the different roles, every accessibility requirement has an owner.
The easiest way to assign clear roles for who is responsible for accessibility in your product is to break it down by expertise.
- Designers own colour contrast, focus states and readable typography.
- Developers ensure semantic HTML, ARIA and keyboard functionality.
- QA tests with screen readers and automated tools.
- Product Owners prioritise fixes in sprints and check acceptance criteria.
Next, all you have to do is to document these roles, what each is responsible for and embed them in your workflow.
For example:
- A designer might ask, did I include all the required accessibility annotations for this form before handing it off to the developer?
- The developer would think, do all my form controls have the correct role and state information programmatically associated?
- The QA tester would say, can I successfully fill in this form using a screen reader?
- The product owner would check, does this issue have an accessibility acceptance criteria and is it checked?
The result is a more streamlined approach to accessibility. Teams with clear roles catch issues earlier. And they avoid last-minute fire drills and costly rework.
Pro tip: Use checklists in your workflow, like my free Accessibility checklists that break down per role what you should do to check your work for major accessibility issues without feeling intimidated by confusing terms.
Here's the homework for you. Map out who owns what in your next retro and let me know how that goes.
Next time, we'll talk about setting measurable goals to tackle accessibility debt.