Sometimes you do everything right and accessibility still gets ignored.
You saw the patterns and tried your best to work with the devs and the designers. Everyone nodded but nothing really changed.
I hate to say it, but now you're looking at a deeper problem rooted in company culture. The sad thing is that it usually comes from the top.
It's usually because leadership rewards speed over quality. They do it through what they celebrate, what they ask about in reviews, who they give new titles, who they increase salaries for and who gets bonuses.
Now everyone in the room you're sitting is doing the math. If they want a bonus or a promotion, they need to ship at all costs. They're just watching out for themselves. They're not being difficult.
So what can you do?
Obviously, shouting harder or coming up with better arguments for anyone in that room would be pointless. The decisions get made outside of the room you're in, so you start looking outward. Who makes these calls and how? Find out who signs off on the roadmap. Who feels it when a release goes badly? Start building a case for that person.
The person who owns the outcome.
Then give them something concrete to work with. Forget principles and statistics.
You need numbers.
- How many bugs came back after last quarter's release?
- How many sprints got disrupted by something that wasn't planned?
- How much of the team's time went on work that should have been done the first time?
If it's costs they care about, make the cost argument. If it's time and speed, show them how rework slows them down.
It's the only move that changes anything when the problem lives higher up.
It takes longer too. Because guess what? Even after you've convinced the higher ups that accessibility matters enough for decisions to come down the pipe, you still have to go back in that room and fight for it to be prioritised every sprint.