You can't prioritise accessibility

1 minute read

If you're trying to prioritise accessibility against other features, you've already got it wrong.

Accessibility isn't a feature. Think of it like performance, or security, or not losing user data. You don't prioritise whether to make your product secure. You build security into everything you do.

The same applies to accessibility. It's not a nice-to-have that you slot in when time permits.

When you prioritise features, you're deciding what to build. Accessibility is about how you build those features. Every prioritised feature should be accessible by default. You're not adding scope, you're just defining what "done" means.

When you treat accessibility as something to prioritise later, it never happens. There's always another feature that seems more urgent. And you end up shipping something that excludes people. And ot because you prioritised wrong, but because you framed the question wrong.

You asked "when will we make this accessible?" when you should have thought about making it accessibly from beginning.

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