There’s a misconception that accessibility is something a single champion can own. You’ve probably seen this. One person gets passionate about making a product accessible, takes on a mountain of work, and maybe they make some progress, until they hit a wall, run out of energy, or move on. The truth is, accessibility isn’t a heroic solo quest. It’s a team effort, and treating it like anything else is setting up for failure.
Ensuring accessibility takes more than adding alt text or using semantic HTML (though those are good starts). It’s about cultivating a mindset across every part of the process with designers, engineers, product managers. Everyone needs to care about accessibility if it’s going to stick. A designer considers color contrast before they open Figma. A product manager asks what accessibility standards a feature should meet when scoping it. An engineer thinks about keyboard navigation while writing the first line of code. It’s a web woven together, not a last-minute patch.
Every team and organization I have worked with says they care about accessibility, but often it doesn’t become a real priority. It’s easy to express a desire for accessibility, but without dedicated resources and support from management, it remains just that, a desire. It requires leadership to prioritize accessibility through meaningful investment and by embedding it into team goals and processes. It’s unlikely that the business side of your organization can really make more significant sales to invest heavily. Most of the time it is just a checkbox during the marketing or sale process. It’s understandable, given the fact that resources are limited.
When accessibility works best, it’s just part of how your team does things. Not a checklist at the end, not a separate ticket in the backlog. The most successful teams bake it into their DNA. They’ve got playbooks, reusable components that are accessible out of the box, and a culture where everyone’s comfortable pointing out potential barriers. When everyone gets it right from the start, it’s cheaper, faster, and just better for everyone involved.
So if you’re that accessibility champion, the one person who’s been pushing, I’ll say this, your goal isn’t to do all the work. Your goal is to get everyone to own it a little bit. Start small. Share wins. Celebrate when someone remembers to add a focus state or labels a button properly. It’s about getting the team to play together, not putting the weight on your shoulders alone.
*Note: This article was proofread and refined with the assistance of AI language tools. The core ideas and opinions expressed are my own.