Six months from now, someone will ask why you made that accessibility decision. And you won't remember.
Right now you think you will. Trust me, you won't. No one will.
This is why I always write things down. Not everything, just the important bits.
Why that dropdown needs to work with just a keyboard. What I learned when a screen reader user couldn't complete checkout. Those accessible patterns that worked.
I started simple. I started with a shared doc. That worked fine.
I would just capture the accessibility decisions and the reasoning behind them. When I figured out how to make a component keyboard accessible, I wrote it down. When I messed up focus management and fixed it, I wrote down what happened.
Whenever new team members asked, I pointed them to that document. They shouldn't have to dig through old tickets to understand why and how we built things accessibly. They shouldn't have to make the same accessibility mistakes I already made.
I don't think good documentation is about being comprehensive. It's more about being useful. A few clear examples of accessible components beat pages of WCAG guidelines every time.
And here's the thing.
Writing down my accessibility decisions forces me to think them through properly.
If I can't explain why something's accessible, maybe it isn't.
To this day, my future self thanks me. So does everyone who comes after me.
Documentation is the fourt thing on my list of 10 things you should focus on.