If you can't make time, then all you can do is make a choice. Delay the fix or push something else aside. It's all too easy to choose to delay the fix. But sometimes you have to do it. When that happens, I’d rather hear that plainly than be told you'll somehow make time.
Say the booking flow doesn't work with a keyboard. Say you agree to fix it in the next release. Say that until then, patients can call reception.
That's the decision, Fine. We can plan and work with that.
But what usually happens is that the next release comes and there's too much to do. The accessibility fixes move again. The workaround is still there, so the delay is easier to accept this time.
I've seen "next release" turn into a comfortable place to put work nobody wants to reject outright.
A delay needs a reason and a point when we'll reconsider it. Even then, we can't carry it forward forever. Each time the fixes move, we're choosing to keep asking patients to use the workaround.
But we need to be honest and ask ourselves if the workaround is still serving people.
One delay might make sense. If the same issues survive several planning cycles, I'd stop calling it a temporary workaround.
At some point, the workaround becomes the way.